ROSCOMMON— A Northern Michigan children’s advocacy center is expanding, but needs help to keep the multi-million dollar project moving in the new year.
The Northern Michigan Children’s Assessment Center in Roscommon has been raising money for the past two years to jump start the more than $3 million expansion.
NMCAC executive director Rebecca Yuncker said the new facilities will help them investigate crimes against children and victims of sexual assault.
“So it’s really just going to allow us to provide the services that we’re providing now, in a better informed care. When we started the center, the focus really was just on that forensic interview. So we really didn’t need a lot of space and we didn’t have a lot of staff,” said Yuncker.
Yuncker said after 11 years of serving Northern Michigan, the center has outgrown their space in Roscommon.
The center is currently in phase one of their planned expansion moving into adjoining space in the same building in the same location that used to house a juvenile detention center and a Second Chance Academy.
“We don’t have a private medical suite right now. Our medical suite is embedded right into the advocacy. This space is going to give us a private waiting room for anyone coming in for a medical exam. They’ll have a private entry way,” said Yuncker.
She said law enforcement will also have an investigative suite with a bigger observation room and their own office space to work from.
“Our observation room for law enforcement is just a really small room that a lot of times we might have 3 or 4 people in there. If we have officers who are in training, they’re crammed in an observation room. While you’re watching the forensic interview. We’ll have two interview rooms. So we can get kids in sooner for interviews. One we can really make conducive to little kids and one for teens just to make it more comfortable for them. And then the office space that we’re going to gain, and allowing us to meet with families and to provide the services in a confidential manner,” said Yuncker.
The center has currently raised more than $983,000 of a $1.2 million phase one goal.
Sgt. John Ellis with the Gerrish Township Police Department said the new additions will help them gather critical evidence and help survivors.
“It’s intimidating for younger kids to maybe have to go to a police station and be interviewed by law enforcement officer in uniform,” said Ellis.
“Kids are being sexually abused. And that’s just a fact that we have to acknowledge. It’s not, you know, a silent epidemic anymore. Our cases are going up. We saw a 12% increase from our 2024 to 2025 cases,” said Yuncker.
Yuncker said they are still $200,000 shy of their fundraising goal for phase one.
The second phase, after all the services are moved over, will be renovating their current spaces. Phase three will focus on the outdoor of the center, including signage and naming rights for the right donor.
The center hopes to have expansion complete by the end of this year or early next spring of 2027.
For more information on the expansion project or how to contribute, please click here.