Your love makes a difference for kids in the USA!
Child Abuse Intervention Fund is helping children by bringing them hope, healing, intervention, counseling, legal aid, support groups, medical referrals, education, safe-houses, and a national hotline.
In the USA CAIF has 3 special programs we support besides other opportunities that we have to help needy and abused children in other countries.
Child Abuse Intervention Fund supports The Garden of Angels in southern California, and its Safe Arms for Newborns program, and intervention and legal services for abused children. This program is based in Maryland.
Special programs in the USA
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The Garden of Angels
The Garden of Angels is a beautiful, peaceful cemetary within a cemetary in Calimesa, California, created in 1996 to honor abandoned and unclaimed children and provide them a final special resting place. Since it opened, the bodies of 81 tiny children have been laid to rest within its quiet walls. these children, known to police and coroners only by numbers, have been found in trashcans or dumpsters, along roadways, washed up on beaches, or otherwise abandoned by their parents.
These abandoned little ones are given a name instead of an identification number, and a voice instead of the silence that their parent or parents had intended for them. These children speak loudly about the value o human life. They also offer a testimony of love about caring for one another.
An annual memorial service is held each August to honor and remember all of the children interred in the Garden of Angels.
We honor the children in the Garden, but it is our greatest hope and goal to never bury another “throwaway” child again. that is why the Safe Arms for Newborns public awareness and educational campaign has been developed. We are reaching out to youth and young adults with the tragic story of newborn abandonment, the preventative alternatives that are now available with the passage of California’s “Safe Haven” law. This law has been adopted by many states, and there are now designated “safe drop-off” locations in almost every state where a mother can drop off her newborn with no questions asked.
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Safe Arms for Newborns
The Safe Arms for Newborns outreach and educational program has been created as a part of the Garden of Angels to help prevent the tragedy of newborn abandonment. On January 1, 2001 the “Save a Baby Bill” took effect in California. Within 20 months of passage, 12 babies were safely surrendered because of it. during that same period, 29 others were abandoned—17 of whom were found dead.
The Garden of Angels and its Safe Arms for Newborns program is committed to prevention. An educational campaign has been launched which includes a toll-free help line, public service announcements, and printed advertisements. There is also a video designed to reach out to young people in schools as they discuss life issues and teen pregnancy in the classroom. We believe that this tragedy of newborn abandonment can only be changed through education of today’s students.
This new law allows mothers confidentiality with the guarantee of no criminal prosecution if their newborn child is surrendered unharmed withing the first 72 hours of life. They may do this at any hospital emergency department in the state of California. There is a two-week “cooling off” period during which the baby does not formally enter the child welfare system. This allows the mother to reconsider her decision, and work to reclaim her child if she so desires. If no contact is made within this two-week period, child welfare services will begin the legal process through the courts for the baby to have a permanent home with adoptive parents.
It is difficult to sit in a courtroom and see the lives devastated by the one single act of newborn abandonment. The life and promise of an innocent child is lost forever; a young woman’ life is changed forever by the deed she has done and the prison sentence she will receive; the young woman’s parents will lose their daughter and their grandchild. we must share the story of the children in the Garden of Angels, communicate with teenagers, and reaffirm with them that no matter what the circumstances in their lives, together we can work through them.
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Intervention Services
Child Abuse Intervention Fund provides services to victims of sexual abuse, family abuse and violence in a manner to ensure dignity and healing. Services are also provided to family members of victims.
CAIF seeks to meet the many needs of traditionally under-served populations who are now additionally burdened by prohibitive court costs and the immense financial pressures carried by single-family households. The best in services are sought and provided to ensure dignity and healing.
24-hour hotline—301-251-9099
Average of 30 calls and 18 emails per day.
Records on each phone call are meticulously kept.
Confidentiality is guaranteed to all.
Services provided in 5 states:
First-time caller case evaluation
Obtaining CPS records, police reports, medical documentation, legal dispositions, etc
Referring callers to members of the network (doctors, lawyers, licensed social workers, police officers, protective services workers, etc.)
Serving as a liaison between Child Protective Service agencies, social service agencies and the courts
Coordinating physical and psychological evaluations as necessary
Helping prepare parents/guardians and children for court dates
Accompanying children and their families to court appearances
Assisting school systems and county and state agencies in preparing prevention manuals
Speaking at professional conferences and seminars
Counseling legal professionals on admissible evidence and precedents
Assisting law enforcement agencies in pending cases
Additionally, we have worked with cases involving child kidnapping and subsequent murders. We have worked diligently with the authorities to provide expert testimony concerning pedophiles. We have also set up programs to educate children about escape from these situations as well as prevention techniques.