Child Advocates

As you may or may not know, I started volunteering as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) with Child Advocates last February. When a child is pulled by Department of Child Services, not only are they assigned a caseworker (who's ultimate goal is reunification of the family), they are *hopefully* assigned a guardian ad litem as well. The goal of the GAL (myself) is to really get to know the child and become familiar with the case, and then to make recommendations to the court based on what is best for the CHILD. We have the fortunate situation of being able to focus on only the needs of the child--not worrying about pleasing other people involved in the case (mom/dad/aunt/caseworker/etc).

Since becoming involved with Child Advocates, I have seen a crack baby develop into a healthy 16 month old and start the adoption process with a loving relative; another premature child born to a mom with an addiction to prescription drugs now start the adoption process with a loving aunt, uncle, and cousins; and three little boys who are just now starting trial in home visits with their mom, after she attended classes and stood up to her abusive (ex) boyfriend. It has been amazing, I have met great people, and I really feel like I have made a difference (I'm happy to talk about my experiences if you're interested)

Child Advocates has several full time, staffed (paid) employees who work as hard as they physicall can--but they can't reach all the kids in the system. Each paid employee has roughly 25 volunteers who report all the fine details back up the chain. There is a strong need for new volunteers--they trained 140 new volunteers this year and there are still over 800 kids with NO VOICE in court. And they only ask for 6-8 hours/month from each volunteer (I do it with a full time job)--a visit to the children, a few phone calls, a court date here and there. I'm using my blog as a sales pitch :) But it has truly been a rewarding experience. Check it out at http://www.childadvocates.net/ (Marion County)