CYNICS NEED NOT APPLY:

CASA VOLUNTEERS DEFEND CHILDREN

OF ABUSE AND NEGLECT

by Kate Tarasenko

[Originally published in the Rocky Mountain Bullhorn (Fort Collins, Colo.),

June 2002, pgs. 10-11]

EDITOR’S NOTE: In cases where only the first name of a person is given, it has been changed to protect the privacy and safety of families and
volunteers.

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Evelyn’s father was a no-show at today’s hearing. The toddler’s mother will begin serving a two-year jail term tomorrow.

Vincent’s mother has been drug-free for the past six months, but she is still unable to handle the demands of caring for her special-needs son.

Anna looks forward to visiting her older sister every week. She lives with a different foster family.

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When the juvenile court judge reads the blue-colored report he pulls from the case file, the details tell him what the attorneys and county caseworkers
have little time to investigate. Those blue forms are filled out by the Court-Appointed Special Advocates, the CASA volunteers. Made up of local
residents, these citizens dedicate themselves to helping end child abuse and neglect by shouldering some of the load from the over-burdened court
system. More importantly, a CASA will often become one of the few steady figures in an abused child’s unstable life. As the poster in CASA, Inc.’s
Justice Center office says, a CASA volunteer is “a common person with an uncommon commitment.”

The need for child advocacy is mirrored by the staggering rise in reported child abuse cases in Colorado, which have tripled in the last 10 years,
according to Sue Life, CASA, Inc.’s new Larimer County executive director. Although national statistics vary, between 400,000 and one million
cases of abuse and neglect are substantiated each year by child protection agencies around the country, and Larimer County has a stake in about 125
of them.

“We have a piece of that…and we can really have an impact,” says Life of CASA, Inc. and its offspring, Harmony House.

CASA volunteers undergo an intensive screening and training process, which includes a criminal background check, an in-depth interview, and
30-plus hours of learning about the legal system, social services, mediation and interviewing techniques, community resources, and proper
documentation and report-writing. Eventually, each volunteer is assigned to a family who is forced to navigate its way through the legal process of
dependency and neglect, or “D&N,” hearings, which are civil proceedings prompted by a filing of abuse or neglect charges by Larimer County’s
Department of Human Services (DHS).

At the heart of every D&N case is the goal of placing the child in a safe and permanent home. Sometimes this means reuniting the child with the
family; other times it means placement in foster care or an adoptive home. CASA volunteers are assigned to a child in order to develop
recommendations in his or her best interests. The CASA is “the child’s voice in court.”

If this sounds like the complex legal work best left to child care experts, Linn Bates begs to differ. The effort is undertaken by “ordinary people with
extraordinary hearts,” says the volunteer coordinator of CASA.

“Jo” is a case in point. A mother used to a life of volunteerism, in addition to a busy career as a nurse, she wanted to continue helping children after
hers had grown and begun families of their own. Jo completed the screening and training protocol which concluded with a swearing-in ceremony by
the court where she took an oath of confidentiality. She was immediately assigned a neglect case that upset her so much, she wasn’t sure she could
set aside her biases against the parents. Jo talked it over with Bates, who encouraged her to give it a try, and so began her year-long commitment.

While her focus was on the child, Jo’s access to the extended family, teachers, therapists, and caseworkers enabled her to provide some structure and
support for the parents to work on their court-mandated treatment plan, which included drug rehab and parenting classes.

“It was like a huge puzzle. I helped put together the pieces on the outside so the inside could be filled in,” she says.

Renate Justin became a CASA after retiring three years ago from a 50-year medical career as a family physician, which took her from working with
inner-city children in Central America to street kids in Fort Collins.

“I am impressed with how much deeper a view we can have of a child’s life and the people in it,” she says. Dr. Justin has written of her experiences
for CASA’s newsletter, as well as for the medical journal, The Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Critical Psychiatry.

“Donna,” a single software engineer, discovered CASA through a welcome-wagon brochure. She found her training dealing with sexual abuse cases
to be the most challenging. Asked where she puts her outrage in such instances, Donna says that treating people with respect does not signify
agreement with their behavior.

“It’s easy to get angry, but it’s never that simple… The kids are still deeply connected to their abusers, and sometimes one of the specific goals of the
treatment plan is to improve the relationship between the parent and child,” rather than discontinue it.

Of the 10 CASA programs in Colorado, Larimer County’s is one of the few around the country that funds a family visitation center. Harmony House,
a two-story brick farmhouse located on Harmony Road across from Hewlett-Packard, was donated to CASA, Inc. about 10 years ago. A second one
is run out of Loveland. Harmony House provides ongoing training for volunteers who supervise and document visits between children and their
non-custodial parents. Visitation reports are used by attorneys, caseworkers and the courts for custody issues. The center is also frequently employed
for its convenience, for a modest fee, by divorced parents who are not involved in a current legal dispute.

Funding is a perennial issue for the private nonprofit and its small staff, which currently receives about 11 percent of its total budget from United
Way, along with a smaller grant from a victims’ compensation fund. As United Way switches to competitive grants next year, CASA will rely more
heavily on private and in-kind donations to keep the wheels of operation turning.

Michael Murphy decided to volunteer at the Fort Collins Harmony House while awaiting the start of CASA’s annual training, which begins in
September, as many CASA’s have done. An insurance man of 30 years with grown children, he has been supervising family visits for the past three
months.

Attorney Randall Lococo splits his practice with the juvenile courts as a Guardian Ad Litem, representing the legal interests of children. His passion
of putting families back together involves a constellation of advocates and agencies, and his job is made easier by CASAs.

“Children are a necessary stakeholder in the system, and CASA has a critical amount of input as their independent voice,” he says.

A caseworker with Larimer County’s DHS, Sue Hoenshell-Brown on occasion likens her job to that of an air-traffic controller, “keeping things from
crashing.” She is currently co-developing a program for the County that incorporates community intervention.

Of CASA, Brown says, “I consider them to be a partner in this enterprise of helping families… Some parents demonize DHS. With the eyes of a
CASA, someone who is not a service provider but a member of the community, it makes things easier. My job is so much more satisfying when the
family succeeds.”

Magistrate Joseph Coyte presides over juvenile court in the Eighth Judicial District. From the bench in Courtroom 4B at the Justice Center, he echoes
the sentiments of Brown at DHS.

“The value of the CASAs is that they are not part of the government. Nobody likes being told by government to do something, even if they know
they should. Parents are more receptive to [CASA’s] non-adversarial ways.”

In May, CASA was honored by the Fort Collins Human Relations Commission “for contributing inspirational leadership in the advancement of
human dignity.”

While Dr. Justin says that the point of being a CASA is not to become a “permanent loved one, because we will eventually exit that life,” it is
important to be someone the child can rely upon.

“Andrea,” a case manager at Harmony House, puts it another way. “I want to be a piece of serenity in a kid’s life.”

For more information, contact Harmony House at 223-5966, or CASA at 498-6181, or visit their website at www.fortnet.org/CASA.

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