Preventing Abuse

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Parent Education

PCAK aims to meet caregivers where they are and engage with family members through the use of our parent education programs. This includes any and all caregivers – single parents, mothers, fathers, kinship providers, grandparents, foster parents, adoptive parents, parents struggling with substance abuse issues, etc. This is a 12-week program designed to provide the skills necessary for improving parent/child relationships. These skills include:

Understanding what to expect from your children
Recognizing and responding to your children’s needs
Learning effective alternatives to spanking
Creating clear and predictable roles for you and your child
Helping your child achieve independence appropriate to their age

Healthy parenting is every parent’s gift to their child. For that reason, all of our programs utilize a Nurturing Parenting curriculum, which research has proven to promote effective change. Our funded providers are trained and certified professionals to ensure caregivers are given the tools and skills they need to positively impact their children.

1-800-Children

2023 Parent Education Providers

Lean On Me Kentucky

Lean On Me Kentucky is a movement, an imperative, a Call-to-Action for each of us to help build stronger communities so our children grow up healthy and safe, and our families – all families—are valued and thrive.

We know the life of a child can be changed because of one caring adult. Magnify the impact one adult has on the life of a child to an entire community and then imagine how we can change the lives of Kentucky’s children and their families. Right now. Today. We have the opportunity to shape Kentucky for generations to come. We hope you will become a COMMUNITY SUPPORTER and then watch how we can change our great Commonwealth.

By leaning on the people around you and being someone others can lean on, you become a community supporter. Imagine how YOU can help your neighbors, and others within your community in ways you had never thought of before. YOU have talents, resources, and connections that may help a family in need; YOU can lend a listening ear, provide a hot meal, or assist with transportation. A Community Supporter can change the trajectory of a family. A Community Supporter can change a life.

Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky, in partnership with the Department for Community-Based Services, is pleased to launch “Lean On Me,” a toolkit meant to help people and organizations to become effective community supporters.

The toolkit, which you can look through and download below, has resources, results from focus groups, videos, and more about becoming community supporters and how to “LEAN” on the people around you!

As you get used to the toolkit and start to implement it into your everyday life, we would love to hear your feedback! You can give us your feedback here.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Toolkit

FAQ's

Take the Pledge!

Fatherhood

Fathers are critical in a child’s life. Research consistently documents the connection between engaged fathers, and improved outcomes for children in areas such as safety, health, education, and social/emotional well-being. When communities recognize the importance of fathers in their children’s lives, families and communities are more apt to succeed. In 2005, PCAK helped launch a collaborative venture between community partners, faith-based organizations and various state departments to enhance the lives of Kentucky’s children and promote family well-being through positive father involvement. For more than a decade, PCAK has been instrumental in furthering this initiative, now identified as the Commonwealth Center for Fathers and Families, by providing direct services to fathers, advocating for father inclusion throughout all family focused programming and informing professionals and practitioners of best practice and relevant fatherhood information. Our goal is to establish and improve the father/child relationship so fathers can be the launching point for their children’s success in life.

“I am grateful for the fatherhood classes. The judge is allowing us to have unsupervised visits with our granddaughter, and we will begin the transition from the 30 days transition to our home next month.”
“I wanted to let you know these classes are awesome. I cannot wait to share and model what I’ve learned with my kids.”
“When I come to class, I feel supported. I feel respected and welcomed, and realize my kids need me.They need me to know this stuff.”
“I wish I would have known the information and tools sooner, I would have never spanked my boys.”
“When I leave class, I go home every night, seriously, and write down what I’ve learned in my journal. I share it with my child’s mother on the phone everyday. I don’t want what happened to me as a kid to happen to my daughter, and it’s my responsibility.”

While father engagement promotes child safety, many other measures of well-being are impacted by the widespread lack of a father figure in the home.
Research indicates the absence of a biological father contributes to increased risk of child maltreatment.
24 million children live without their biological father.
Father absence in urban areas is close to 80%.
Being raised by a single mother raises the risk of teen pregnancy.
12% of children in married-couple families were living in poverty, compared to 44% of children in mother-only families.
Children in father-absent households have significantly higher odds of incarceration.

Source: National Fatherhood Institute

Are They Good for Your Kids?

Primary prevention happens when EVERYONE believes child sexual abuse CAN be prevented and they possess tools to do so. Download or view the Guide to Preventing Child Sexual Abuse and info cards to learn more. You can also use the interactive guide below. Click on the numbers to learn how individuals gain access to children and families for the purpose of child sexual abuse and what you can do to prevent it from happening.

If you’re a professional or looking for more resources on preventing child sexual abuse, please check out the following resources.

Online Internet Safety Training (take at your own leisure), featured KSP Electronic Crime Branch expert
Internet Safety Toolkit
Online assessment geared towards organizations looking to decrease risk of child sexual abuse within their organization
Child Sexual Abuse Risk Reduction Protocol for Youth-Serving Organizations manual for organizations looking to decrease risks of child sexual abuse
PCAK and our Partners in Prevention have a network of trainers available to provide the “Are They Good for Your Kids?” child sexual abuse prevention training or presentation. This content is designed for adults to become more aware of the tools and education needed to lessen the risk of child sexual abuse in the world around them. This training is ideal for parents, caregivers, service providers, youth serving organizations, civic groups and more. Please contact searlyjenkins@pcaky.org to locate a trainer in your area.

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