Emerald Coast Children’s Advocacy Center Celebrates 25 Years of Helping Children Heal

By Kay Phelan

For a quarter of a century, the Emerald Coast Children’s Advocacy Center (ECCAC) has been dedicated to providing hope, healing and justice to child abuse victims and their families in Florida’s Okaloosa and Walton Counties. ECCAC has two centers—the Pierce Family Children’s Advocacy Center in DeFuniak Springs and the Julie Sacco Porterfield Children’s Advocacy Center in Niceville. ECCAC is an accredited part of the National Children’s Advocacy Center non-profit organization. There are 900 Centers across the country, with 28 of them located in Florida.

The centers don’t house children, but instead provide many needed services 24/7 in a child-friendly environment where children can safely tell their stories. Along with ECCAC’s staff and volunteers, both of our local centers house a multidisciplinary team of child protection representatives from the Florida Department of Children and Families, Child Protection Team, State Attorney’s Office, local law enforcement and licensed mental health counselors. In ECCAC’s 25-year history, over 33,000 children have received more than 200,000 services at no cost.

The single most important hallmark of ECCAC’s process is the fact that the impacted child, dealing with the immediate trauma and stress of their situation, can tell their story in one room, just one time. They do not have to repeat it numerous times at different places to different people. In other words, all pertinent parties that can help the child victim are all there at the centers at the same time. Once the child tells their story, action is immediately taken as required for that particular case. It is estimated that for every child ECCAC helps in the two counties, there are two children out there who are not helped due to lack of reporting to authorities.

The Progress to Help Children Continues

The Niceville center was the first to open 25 years ago. With Jim and Tammy Pierce’s major financial support in 2015, the second center in DeFuniak Springs was made possible The Pierce Family Children’s Advocacy Center became a reality and opened on April 8, 2016. This enabled a major increase in the number of children who can be helped.  As well, with prevention being key to making a difference for children, many support programs have been instituted over the years, such as Child Safety Matters, which has advocates who have taught awareness programs to over 17,000 students in both counties. Also, through another grant program, 2 ½  years ago ECCAC implemented its CARES program, a preventative family-oriented initiative with a myriad of services designed to be the bridge to keeping children in safe and supported homes and out of the judicial child welfare system. CARES stands for Community Awareness, Advocacy, Resources, Education and Support.

Leadership and the Community Make A Difference

Julie Sacco Porterfield, ECCAC’s CEO has been heading up the organization since the very beginning. Her dedication and diligence have been significantly responsible for ECCAC’s success and continuing commitment to help area children.

Porterfield commented, “Twenty-five years ago, we stood on the front porch to open the Niceville Center. Our dedicated team members made a promise to our community to protect the most vulnerable in our community. This would not have been possible were it not for our incredible agency partners, our Board of Directors, generous donors, dedicated volunteers and our caring community.” She further added, “One day we will hang that “Closed for Business” sign – not in defeat, but in triumph, because every child will be living free from abuse, abandonment and neglect. Children deserve absolutely no less. We will continue to build a better, healthier future by ending child abuse, one child at a time.”