Public Awareness
Prevent Child Abuse NC (PCANC) supports North Carolina communities in the development, coordination and implementation of public awareness activities that focus on the promotion of child abuse prevention. We nurture positive childhoods by educating and empowering communities to learn about effective solutions to prevent child maltreatment before it ever occurs.
Raising Awareness to Prioritize Child Maltreatment Prevention
Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina (PCANC) leads North Carolina’s child maltreatment prevention public awareness and community engagement activities in partnership with North Carolina DSS and local agencies.
In FY21-22, PCANC hosted statewide public awareness campaigns focused on primary prevention, created an internal communications campaign for NC DSS agencies, and provided education and technical assistance to NC Family Support Grantees to strengthen understanding of how to effectively develop and frame prevention messages.
Child Abuse Prevention Month
Every April, PCANC spearheads North Carolina’s Child Abuse Prevention Month (CAP Month) campaign. For CAP Month 2022, PCANC hosted four virtual activities: Wear Blue Day, the #BeAConnection social media campaign, an educational webinar and National Digital Advocacy Day. We also created a digital toolkit that received over 11,00 pageviews, distributed over 12,000 informational mailers and created four new customized digital toolkits.
Some key CAP Month highlights include:
- 9 out of 10 NC counties recognized CAP Month
- Nearly 80 individuals participated in the educational webinar which had a satisfaction rate of 4.8 out of 5 and 100% of participants planned to take action after participating in the webinar
- NC Governor Roy Cooper signed the CAP Month 2022 Proclamation and recorded the video on the left
Family Support Awareness Month
Evidence-based parenting education has been shown to prevent child abuse and neglect. Parenting education can be delivered in a home setting (home visiting) or group setting (parenting education groups). Home Visiting and Parenting Education programs help build protective factors that reduce the risk of abuse and neglect, strengthen family relationships and promote children’s healthy development. In 2021, Governor Roy Cooper declared February as “Parenting Education Awareness Month.” To be more inclusive of the broad range of family support programs across North Carolina, the name changed slightly in February 2022 to “Family Support Awareness Month.”
PCANC partnered with NC Partnership for Children, the NC Home Visiting and Parenting Education System Collaborative and other key partners to create the Family Support Awareness Month (FSAM) statewide campaign. Part of this campaign included a kick-off with the Home Visiting & Parenting Education Summit, a FSAM communications toolkit a toolkit on how to submit a proclamation to officially recognize FSAM in local communities.
DSS Internal Communications Campaign
New this year, PCANC developed an Internal Communications Campaign for the NC Division of Social Services (DSS) in partnership with NC Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The goal of this campaign was to ensure there is a shared vision, understanding, and messaging around child maltreatment prevention across North Carolina’s DSS workforce.
Strategies in building the campaign included conducting focus groups with NC DSS staff, developing a prevention toolkit with resources and materials for all DSS agencies to use, and facilitating trainings to support the implementation of the toolkit. PCANC hosted five trainings with nearly 40 participants and sent 300 free campaign posters to local DSS agencies.
Our Work in FY 2021-2022
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