ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Teresa Huizar is CEO of Washington, D.C.-based National Children’s Alliance (NCA), the nation’s network of nearly 1,000 Children’s Advocacy Centers, providing justice and healing through services to child victims of abuse and their families.

Military families serve our country with strength and sacrifice. But when one of their children experiences abuse, they face unique barriers to getting the help they deserve.

Nearly 890,000 children live in active-duty households. Frequent relocations and school changes — while a common part of military life — can interrupt care and leave families without steady support.

For years, military and civilian systems handled cases separately — well-intentioned, but rarely connected. Children often had to retell painful stories, while families faced delays and confusion about where to turn for help.

These were gaps of coordination, not commitment. But any disconnect can make it harder to get kids the help they need and hold abusers accountable.

Collaboration between military and civilian services has improved in recent years, thanks to bipartisan reforms. But ensuring a coordinated, trauma-informed response requires continued investment. Congress can help by securing stable funding to sustain the civil-military partnerships that best protect children.

When a child in a civilian family experiences abuse, authorities direct the family to a Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) — one of nearly 1,000 nationwide serving over 370,000 children annually. In these centers, a child tells their story once, in a safe setting, to a trained forensic interviewer. A team of law enforcement, prosecutors, medical professionals, and victim advocates coordinates the investigation and connects the family with ongoing care.

Military families have historically operated within a parallel system. The Department of Defense recorded 26,000 reports of domestic and child abuse in 2023. The DOD’s Family Advocacy Program (FAP) responds to these cases by supporting families and coordinating military systems, including law enforcement and command channels — a structure designed for the realities of military life.

But when civilian and military systems didn’t communicate, families were caught in the middle.

Imagine a child in a military family confiding in a teacher at a public school. The teacher reports suspected abuse to child protective services, triggering a Children’s Advocacy Center response. Meanwhile, FAP responds and military law enforcement may open an investigation. Without coordination, that child may be interviewed multiple times by different investigators, reliving their trauma each time. Key details can be lost, and families may receive conflicting guidance.

Recognizing this, Congress strengthened civil-military collaboration in 2018 when it reauthorized the Victims of Child Abuse Act. That prompted the Department of Defense and the National Children’s Alliance — the umbrella organization for Children’s Advocacy Centers — to establish new frameworks for jointly responding to cases. Since then, NCA has signed memoranda of understanding with military criminal investigative organizations and the FAP to formalize cooperation. CACs now work with all branches of military service in communities across the country.

These partnerships allow military families to access the best care that both systems offer.

Interviewing children and conducting forensic exams demand a careful, precise approach — done poorly, they can retraumatize a child or jeopardize a case. CAC staff receive specialized training and conduct hundreds of interviews per year. Even seasoned law enforcement investigators rarely conduct as many child forensic interviews as CAC professionals. Their expertise allows law enforcement to concentrate on the case, rather than trying to serve as both detective and forensic interviewer.

Military programs bring their own strengths. They can approve humanitarian transfers, allowing families to move closer to support after experiencing abuse. If the perpetrator is an active-duty service member, the military can swiftly remove them from the household or mandate specific treatment.

Such progress is meaningful, but gaps remain. Many CACs don’t realize how many military families live in their communities, and training on military culture and command structures varies significantly. Limited resources compound these challenges.

These centers don’t charge military families for their services. Simultaneously, they face a $600 million funding shortfall. Stable funding would help them strengthen military partnerships and provide families with a unified response — one that pairs the military’s understanding of service life and authority to take swift protective action with CACs’ expertise in child abuse interviews and investigations.

Congress should direct dedicated funding through the Department of Defense to sustain this collaboration. That investment would help CACs support more military families and standardize data sharing for seamless case coordination.

America’s service members give everything to protect this country. Their children deserve the same protection in return. The partnerships are in place. Now Congress must provide lasting support to ensure no military child falls through the cracks again.