National CASA/GAL Association for Children: My Personal Experience & Why I Stopped Supporting it
Never thought I'd be one to stop supporting an organization whose mission is to life up the voiceless but here I am.
For years, I admired the volunteer organization known as National CASA/GAL and the work they do in giving children in foster care a voice. The idea that some ordinary citizens could dedicate their time to making a difference in a child’s life was encouraging to me as someone who always felt they needed to “do something” about child abuse.
What I didn’t know was the exact role I would be asked to perform as a volunteer, and that the impact this organization claims to make in children’s lives was nothing more than a sanctimonious badge of honor.
National CASA loves to remind you that it was a judge’s idea to create this program, solidifying their foot in the door of most child abuse courtrooms with this flex. What they fail to mention is that in most states, around the year CASA came to fruition, The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 was passed by Congress and introduced states to the idea of appointing a Guardian Ad Litem in their abuse and neglect matters.
In other words, this was already happening without the need for civilian volunteers.
This isn’t meant to stomp on the late Judge Soukup’s intentions, it was thoughtful and helped generate the idea that hey, maybe we should appoint guardians to minors in court.
In fact, the states where I experienced CASA, a guardian ad litem attorney is appointed automatically to every abuse and neglect matter.
So, what was I doing as a volunteer?
I can’t speak for all CASA chapters, but I can speak from my experience with one.
To avoid names and accusing anyone unfairly, I will leave name details and the locations out of this story.
The CASA location I volunteered for and briefly worked for was located out of small town. There, it was ran by a single director, a small board of directors, and 1-2 employees. This location served three counties, with one of those counties in a neighboring state due to our location in a tri-state region.
Three counties meant the increased need for grant funding to keep serving and supporting it’s communities. Yet when I would mention I was from CASA while sitting in the courtroom on docket days to take notes, hardly anyone understood why I was there.
How has this organization been involved in this community for close to two decades and no one understands why I’m here? I wondered to myself.
I went from part-time volunteer to burned out paralegal looking to make a difference, so I quit my job to take on this volunteer coordinator role with an organization I had long admired.
My role, supposedly, was to recruit and train volunteers.
I never did any of that.
No, instead, I’d often get in my car at 8 am, show up to the run-down and filthy office and briefly be told that we needed to be at court, and then an MDT meeting, and then maybe a trip 2 hours away to visit a child, and then back to discuss entering data into the data systems. It was a constant circus of juggling where we needed to be and writing court reports over lunch mere hours before it was due.
Now, for background, I was and am a paralegal. I’m arguably a “professional notetaker.”
So, I’m familiar with a lot of the legal hoops and why some things just take so dang long in the system. Which is why when tasked with taking notes while in a courtroom, naturally, I inquired what we intended to do with these case notes.
“Put them into Casa Manager.”
Casa Manager was a database used by National Casa and it’s non-profits to manage data that supported their statistics used for grant report writing and ultimately, funding.
“Okay, but what else? Shouldn’t we be attending the cases we’re actively assigned to? Following up with some of these parents who need resources? These notes are going no where.” I’d respond.
She’d explain that these notes are “kept” in the event a volunteer is assigned to the case and needed some background information. It’s a good reason, but I’d point out that we can easily gather that information from reading the court filings. Regardless, my point was that we spent a lot of resources and time sitting in courtrooms taking notes and chatting with courtroom staff instead of recruiting volunteers to be here.
Afterall, CASA’s main mission was to speak up on behalf of the voiceless children in foster care. If my notes were to help that mission, so be it.
Like with a lot of things I figured out over time, it was a numbers game. If she attended 50 docket cases that week, that meant 50 cases she could list for her grant reporting, which meant funding, etc. I understood, numbers were great and necessary to keep the funds in so the mission can continue, but the mission wasn’t happening.
Our location had roughly 14 volunteers, including me. 14 volunteers for three counties was arguably low but better than zero. It takes a lot to be a volunteer and not something easily done in your pass time. Often, our volunteer was a student studying to be a social worker, or a retired wife and mother.
To be clear, CASA volunteers are amazing people. They volunteer their time to learn about a complicated legal matter involving the livelihoods of vulnerable children. They spend their free time reading police reports, talking with social workers, meeting with foster and biological parents, all while their heart remains in the right place.
My heart is forever changed by the kids I personally served as their volunteer advocate. So don’t get it twisted. Volunteering is amazing. Helping foster families and bio families find support is amazing and necessary.
This isn’t attack on volunteers. It’s a call to look into the organization using their volunteers to fund positions in rural counties much like the one I became familiar with. Organizations that I personally felt did nothing they were supposed to do.
CASA sets their organizations up in a lot of ways to give back to the community and keep their mission and goals clear. By that, I mean we have a lot of resources to fund a recruiting event, take volunteers out for lunch, participate in a charity event, etc.
I recognized these recruiting opportunities and would bring this to the director’s attention. Yet her focus seemed more concerned with reporting numbers to keep money coming in and being spent questionably elsewhere.
There was a moment back when I was a volunteer that I realized a serious flaw in the way CASA works alongside the system. This flaw arguably plays a large role in the life changing decisions that affect these children.
I wrote a court report as required after spending time with the kids I was assigned to and submitted it. The following day, I sat in awe as a social worker, someone paid to investigate the well-being of these children, testified word-for-word my court report as if my experience was hers. I realized then that this is dangerous.
While of course what I reported was true, what if it wasn’t? I’m not paid to do this. I’ve had some training and took classes and passed a background check, but how can this social worker go up there and say that about these kids? What if I was supplying my own bias into this report to keep them from returning to their biological parents? My mind was blown and I grew concerned. I brought this up to the director about what just happened and she laughed and agreed it was crazy, but “at least we know she’s saying the right thing.”
Did we, though?
These court reports are vital in assisting judges when determining what to do with a family. Ultimately, there are a lot of facts of the case presented by either side, but it’s been said for years how helpful volunteer recommendations on what the children truly want have been in aiding their decisions.
The weight of my court report felt a lot heavier.
While in the midst of briefly working at this CASA location, I began doing some digging into this organization and became aware of my own disillusionment.
I found this NCCPR Child Welfare Blog article “The Case Against CASA” and saw that maybe I’m not alone:
“The National CASA Association requires 30 hours of training before sending this overwhelmingly white middle-class army of amateurs into homes that are overwhelmingly neither. Some local chapters may make it 40. But even before COVID, much of it could be taken online.
If that’s all you need, we’re wasting an awful lot of money on law schools and social work schools.”
While I truly believe in advocating for the needs and wants of children who had no say in their situation while sitting in foster care, I cannot sit here in good concious and tell you that National CASA is the best there is for these kids.
In part two I will share more about what I uncovered and the concerns from past employees. I’ve called National CASA and asked that they investigate the location I was at for potential misappropriation of funds and received no answer as to what they could do. I’ve sent emails to have the building inspected and investigated because it’s truly a fire hazard, among other things, and received no response. I’ve attempted to report some other questionable things and was left with empty voicemails.
I will never quit advocating for the best care of children in foster care, or for more community support for biological and adoptive parents. But I will no longer advocate in good concious on behalf of National CASA.