GREENFIELD — About two and a half months into her new role as executive director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Franklin County and North Quabbin, Hatfield resident Carol Conragan said she’s excited to continue getting to know the community and expand residents’ knowledge on what the center has to offer.
Conragan started the job in early July, which is a busy time of year for the center, she said. On top of its regular work of providing mental health services and referrals for child abuse victims, conducting forensic interviews and aiding law enforcement in investigations, and helping train parents, educators and other youth-serving organizations on recognizing signs of child abuse, the center and its team were busy planning its annual fundraising breakfast and working on earning reaccreditation with the National Children’s Alliance.
“It’s been exciting and intense at the same time,” Conragan said. “We were gearing up for our annual fundraiser and we’re currently going through a reaccreditation with the National Children’s Alliance. That’s the national umbrella that governs all the children’s advocacy centers around the country, so that accreditation is quite an intensive process.”
Although originally from Arlington, Massachusetts, Conragan’s prior work as a human rights lawyer brought her to Washington D.C., where she worked at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) until January of this year, when the Trump administration called for major layoffs. USAID was later fully shut down in July.
Conragan said it was a devastating loss, but it gave her a chance to return to Massachusetts.
“It was like your career just ends overnight, but coming back to western Mass was always my plan,” she said. “And the chance to use my skill set toward something meaningful — well, I’ve always been using my skills for something meaningful, but overseas. Now it’s time to give back at the community level.
“I feel quite lucky. I landed well considering, when you lose your career overnight, it’s hard to imagine what will be next,” Conragan continued. “I just never dreamed it would be this good.”
She noted there has been a learning curve with the new role, but she previously worked with child abuse victims and it was work she was passionate about.
“I’m on a bit of a learning curve because while I’m a human rights attorney, it’s been years since I did child protective work,” Conragan said. “I’m keen for it and it’s such important work, and the team I have is amazing, really dedicated people.
“Being a human rights lawyer, it’s always been my passion to work for the underserved and the people who need a voice and who don’t really necessarily have a voice,” she continued. “It was a no-brainer when this job came up.”
She said, despite having a smaller population than the eastern part of the state, child abuse is still prevalent in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region, and the work at the Children’s Advocacy Center is important.
“Child abuse is everywhere,” she said.
Conragan added that while she grew up in eastern Massachusetts, she had spent a lot of time visiting friends in western Massachusetts and always found the region to be beautiful.
“I live in Hatfield now, and I can’t get over that I drive on Route 5 with zero traffic,” Conragan said. “It’s just a great sort of decompressed trip home because it’s so beautiful.”
As she continues to settle into her role and begins to plan the future of the Children’s Advocacy Center, Conragan said she wants to do more public outreach so children and families know about the resources available at their locations in Greenfield and Orange.
“My predecessor, Jeff Trant, he did a really fantastic job of getting the CAC on very solid ground around expanding our mental health services and capacity. So now that that’s in place, we really have to start addressing outreach and prevention,” Conragan said.
She said she would like to work with local school districts to teach students about consent and what safe, healthy and acceptable behaviors are, as well as teach kids that not everything they see online, or are told by adults and peers who may not have good intentions, is true.
“We need to be teaching kids that these are what boundaries are,” Conragan said.
Conragan said the Children’s Advocacy Center does not currently have strong relationships with all of the schools, but she is hoping that will change. She plans to implement a program called Handle With Care, which the Children’s Advocacy Center of Hampshire County started a few years ago.
“The Hampshire County CAC implemented it with great success, and essentially what it does is it works with the police in the community and the schools in the community,” Conragan said. “What it did for Hampshire, and I’m keen for it to happen for us, is that it suddenly built all these relationships between the CAC and the schools, because right now we don’t have much of a relationship.”
The program trains police and teachers on how to recognize signs of child abuse and how to work carefully with traumatized children.