A Certified Child Life Specialist (CCLS) warmly greets each child, spends time with the child to answer questions and helps put the child at ease during their visit to Safe Harbor. After the forensic interview, the CCLS provides child-directed play, creating a trauma-informed environment to help maximize coping. By providing children with developmentally-appropriate information, therapeutic play opportunities, and activities and interventions that promote self-expression and enhance effective coping, children can gain a sense of control over their experiences and build resiliency.
Safe Harbor has begun a pilot Teen Advocacy program as a response to feedback from teens who had attended Safe Harbor. This program provides mental health support to teens immediately after their forensic interview. This intervention helps teens process what they've been through and regain their inner solidity, often through dramatic arts or other non-verbal interventions.
