Georgia’s 2025 Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect
From Prevention to Intervention
Save the Date
Wednesday, September 10, 2025
Peachtree City Hotel and Conference Center
Join over 350 professionals from across the state joined together in Peachtree City on September 10, 2025, for innovative workshops regarding prevention, intervention, and the treatment of children and families impacted by child maltreatment. This conference is proudly hosted by PCA Georgia and the Stephanie V. Blank Center for Safe and Healthy Children at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy.
Call for Proposals
We are seeking innovative workshops that strengthen families through the prevention, intervention, or treatment of child abuse and neglect.
Sponsorships
Connect and promote your organization with hundreds of child and family serving professional from across the state.
Exhibitors
Engage with hundreds of child and family serving professional from across the state.
Award Nominations
The Mark Chaffin award recognizes individuals who have made repeated, significant, and outstanding contributions and commitment to the prevention of child abuse and neglect in Georgia
Conference Logistics
Hilton Peachtree City Conference Center
2443 HWY 54 West
Peachtree City, Georgia, 30269
Hotel: If you will be staying overnight, conference group rates are available using the link below (coming soon).
Parking: Free onsite. View map of parking HERE.
Conference Map: View all the breakout rooms and other areas used for the conference (link coming soon)
Schedule: Registration, networking, and breakfast opens at 7:30am and the conference sessions between at 8:30am and go until 4:30pm on Wednesday, September 10, 2025. A full conference schedule can be seen (coming soon).
CEUs approved for 6.25 hours of: nursing, social work, law enforcement, LPC, and LMFT.
2024 Conference Recap
Nearly 350 professionals from across the state joined together in Peachtree City on September 11, 2024, for innovative workshops regarding prevention, intervention, and the treatment of children and families impacted by child maltreatment. This conference is proudly hosted by PCA Georgia and the Stephanie V. Blank Center for Safe and Healthy Children at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy.
The theme for the 2024 conference was Lean on Me.
The Lean on Me theme reflects a movement away from family surveillance toward a culture of support that values and uplifts people raising children. The need for caregivers to be supported is universal. Systems, communities, and individuals can proactively respond to strengthen families by building protective factors and serving as a resource for caregivers.
Thank you for being someone for families to lean on, as we continue to promote prevention and strengthening families.
2024 Conference Resources and Materials
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Charlyn Harper Browne, PhD, Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Social Policy
Expanding Our Understanding of the Strengthening Families Protective Factors
Resilience and the other Strengthening Families protective factors are often viewed as primarily the responsibility of the individual. This view is problematic because it places the locus of solutions to problems mainly on the individual and minimizes or exonerates communities and the larger society from their responsibility to deal with adverse social conditions.
An expanded understanding of the Strengthening Families protective factors emphasizes the need to consider conditions and circumstances across all levels of the social ecology—societal, community, relational, and individual—that impact the lives of children, youth, parents, and families and help to build or undermine well-being.
Mark Chaffin Award Recipients
This award is given in honor of the life and legacy of Dr. Mark Chaffin. Dr. Chaffin was a leader in the field of child maltreatment research. His main areas of research focused on child abuse and neglect and delinquency intervention and service systems, particularly the development and implementation of evidence-based prevention and treatment approaches within public sector service systems. He dedicated his career to helping at-risk children and families with a sense of fundamental ethics and the need to do the right thing.
This award recognizes an individual who has made repeated, significant, and outstanding contributions and commitment to the prevention of child abuse and neglect in Georgia
Nancy Chandler, MSW
Nancy Chandler served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy from January 2008 to November, 2015 overseeing the work of two Children’s Advocacy Centers serving Fulton and DeKalb Counties. She also served for 14 years as the Founding Executive Director of National Children’s Alliance (NCA), working to increase the number of Children’s Advocacy Centers across the country from the 40’s to more than 700. In this role she instituted the accreditation process for member centers.
Nancy’s leadership and advocacy paved the way for so many professionals in the child advocacy center movement. She has served in direct services, multiple leadership roles on the national/state/local levels, and as a long-time mentor to new and seasoned child abuse professionals alike. She has taught us all when to ‘drop the rope’ to preserve energy to stand tall when needed. She has cheered us all into being the best child advocates the nation can provide but most importantly, she has loved us all into being the best forms of ourselves as professionals. Nancy’s mark is left on generations of professionals and her wisdom and humor will benefit many more in the future.
Chris Allers, PhD
We honor the life and work of our dear colleague and friend, Dr. Christopher Allers. Chris was one of the founders and partners of Advantage Consulting, LLC, where he led evaluation and strategic-planning services for nonprofits and government programs all across the country. Previously, Chris was the Executive Vice President of the Georgia Center for Nonprofits and Senior Consultant of the Nonprofit Consulting Group, and was in senior leadership at the United Way in Atlanta. He was an exemplary leader and advocate for positive community change. With a Doctorate in Counseling from Georgia State University, Chris’s passion for nonprofit excellence drove him to found or co-found four nonprofits in the Metropolitan Atlanta area. His profound influence also extended to academia, with over a dozen research articles published in peer-reviewed professional journals.
He supported the formation of the Georgia Essentials for Childhood initiative and was a key player in pushing the work forward. In 2019, he helped state agencies come together to develop A Vision for Child and Family Wellbeing, Georgia’s Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Plan for the next decade, leading the regional meetings and touring the state to gain input from all communities, and synthesizing the vast amount of data into one coherent plan.
He similarly helped develop strategic plans for several other prevention-related initiatives, like Great Start Georgia, the Georgia Family Support Network, Strengthening Families Georgia, the Injury Prevention Plan at the Georgia Department of Public Health, and PCA Georgia. His passion for the wellbeing of all of Georgia’s families, his dedication to “getting it right” through hard work and difficult conversations, his frequent cajoling and good humor — these ensured that the products of his efforts were always the highest quality and the most relatable. Chris had a storied career in the nonprofit world and his fingerprint remains over so many important organizations and initiatives. He is dearly missed.
2023 Conference Overview and Materials
We are so grateful to all the presenters, sponsors and the almost 400 conference attendees for contributing to the 2024 Georgia Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect. Prevent Child Abuse Georgia, Stephanie V. Blank Center for Safe and Healthy Children at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy are grateful to have provided this educational resource, and have made many of the conference workshop resources publicly available.
Thank you for being part of our WHY, as we continue to promote prevention and strengthening families.
2023 Conference Resources and Materials
- View conference agenda and access workshop presentation and handouts
- Conference photo album
- Read the 2023 conference recap here
Stan Sonu, MD, MPH, is an Assistant professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine and the Associate Program Director for the Emory J. Willis Hurst Internal Medicine Residency program at Grady Health System. His research interests include adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), trauma-informed care, advancing health equity, and addressing social determinants of health in clinical care settings. He is a passionate ACEs educator and is engaged in efforts to build community consensus around responding to and preventing ACEs through cross-sector approaches.
Dana Suskind, MD, has dedicated her research and clinical life to optimizing foundational brain development and preventing early cognitive disparities and their lifelong impact. Her work is focused on helping parents leverage their power as brain architects. Dr. Suskind is the author of “Parent Nation: Unlocking Every Child’s Potential, Fulfilling Society’s Promise” and “Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain.” She is also the Founder and Co-Director of the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health and a Professor at the University of Chicago. Her work has been profiled by numerous media outlets, including the New York Times, The Economist, Forbes, NPR, and Freakonomics.
Day One: September 14
Day Two: September 15
- Special Topics in Mandated Reporting
- ProSolutions Training
- Prevent Child Abuse Georgia Mandated Reporter Information
- CHOA, Stephanie V. Blank Center for Safe and Healthy Children
- Georgia Center for Child Advocacy
- Georgia Division of Family and Children Services- https://dfcs.georgia.gov/
- FindHelpGA.org- https://findhelpga.org/
- The Importance of Parent Partnerships
- Keeping Children Safe in a Digital World
- Understanding the Implications of Georgia’s Mental Health Parity Act
- Day Two Keynote: Parent Nation by Dr. Suskind (available until October 7, 2022)
2021 Conference Workshop Recordings and Materials
There is NO CEU credit available watch recorded workshops from the links below.
When the Village Falls Apart: Lessons Learned from the COVID Pandemic
Presenters: Angie Boy, DrPH, Program Manager, Prevention and Training at Stephanie V. Blank Center for Safe and Healthy Children, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
Cheryl Galloway-Benefield, EdS, Mental Health and Wellbeing Coordinator, Georgia Department of Education
The Demand Side of the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
Presenter: Michelle Price, Human Trafficking Compliance Officer, Criminal Justice Coordinating Council
When Prevention Fails
Presenter: Stephen A. Messner, MD, FAAP, Child Abuse Pediatrician, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
Angie Boy, DrPH, Program Manager, Prevention and Training at Stephanie V. Blank Center for Safe and Healthy Children, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
Mindful Relationships: Looking Beneath the Surface
Presenter: Erica Goldthorp and Denise Payton, ProSolutions
Day One Keynote: The Science and Art of Effective Framing
Presenter: Lynn Davey, Ph.D., Davey Strategies
Racism, Anti-Racism, and the Social Ecology
Presenters: Cailin O’Connor, MS, Senior Associate at Center for the Study of Social Policy
Charlyn Harper Brown, PhD, Senior Associate at Center for the Study of Social Policy
Additional Resources:
- Using an Anti-Racist Intersectional Framework from CSSP
- AAP: The Impact of Racism on Child and Adolescent Health
Prevention in Policy
Presenter: Polly McKinney, Director of Advocacy, Voices for Georgia’s Children
Is That Normal? Healthy Sexual Development in Children
Presenter: Verena Brown, MD, Child Abuse Pediatrician, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
Day Two Keynote: Save the Family: The Unspoken Effects of Family Separation
Presenter: Angela Quijada-Banks
2020’s Virtual Conference
September 16 – October 1, 2020
See Recordings and Materials for Each Session Below
A Vision for Child and Family Well-being in Georgia, Our State’s Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Plan was released at the 2020 conference, resulting from a year long development process that included input and feedback from over 1,000 Georgians.
Conference Kickoff
Kickoff Keynote, Dr. Melissa Merrick, President and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America
Recorded Session
A Vision for Child and Family Well-being in Georgia, Our State’s Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Plan
Presentation Recording
Economic Stability
From Safety Net to Solid Ground: Policy Opportunities to Advance Economic Mobility in Georgia, Alex Camardelle, Senior Economic Mobility Policy Analyst at the GA Budget and Policy Institute
View Recording
Technical Colleges & Economic Development, Dr. Alvetta Thomas, President of the Southern Crescent Technical College and Adie Shimandle, Director of Technical College Directors’ Association
View Recording
Abuse Prevention and Awareness
Using Community Data in Your Prevention Strategy, Tommy Pearce and David Giguere, Neighborhood Nexus
View Recording
Preventing Child Sexual Abuse in Youth Serving Organizations: Collaborating to Inform the Current and Future Direction of Prevention
Access to Early Education
(Re)Designing Equity-Focused Educational Policies and Practices in the COVID-19 Era, Jennifer Darling-Aduana, GSU
View Recording
Supporting the Social-Emotional Wellness of Young Children: Tips for Families, Allison O’Hara, DECAL
View Recording
Family Mental and Physical Health
A Case-Based Presentation to Recognize Child Abuse and Neglect, Drs. Verena Brown & Tamika Bryant of CHOA
View recording
Epigenetics and Generational Trauma, Dr. Brian Dias, Assistant Professor at the Yerkes National Primate Center and Emory University
View Recording
Family Resilience
Strengthening Families throughout Our Communities, Cailin O’Connor, Senior Associate at the Center for the Study of Social Policy
View Recording
Contact Us
Address
| Physical: | 140 Decatur Street SE 1st Floor, Suite 178 Atlanta, GA 30303 |
| Mailing: | P.O. Box 3995 Atlanta, GA 30302 |