casa

Last month I put in an application to be a CASA.  When I told my son about it, his first response was “so you want to be a house?”

No, I didn’t apply to be a Spanish “casa” , but I did apply to be a Court Appointed Special Advocate for Children.   The application process to be accepted into this program was quite lengthily and  included a background check, finger printing, several personal references and an in depth interview.

Yesterday I was officially accepted into the program and now it is onto thirty-six hours of training.  In May I will go to court to take a special oath and then I will be assigned a child.

So exactly what is a Cort Appointed Special Advocate?  A CASA is the voice of a child in a court of law.  Children are too young to speak for themselves, and there are just not enough case workers to handle the amount of children that are in the foster care system, so a CASA is a person who is appointed by a judge to observe and stay with a child until that child is placed in a safe and permanent home.

Once I am assigned a child, I will be part of that childs life over the next two years.  Some children are in and out of so many foster homes, that a CASA is one person that doesn’t keep going in and out of their life.  A CASA  offers the child a sense of security, that there is one person out there that they can truly count on to be there for them.

I have volunteered for other things before, but nothing quite this intimate.   I have been taking baby steps  just trying to get my feet wet little by little and the closer I get to being trained the more excited I am to be a part of this program. Two months ago I had never even heard of  CASA, and then one day the widow of one of my employees who recently passed away stopped by and told me that she was going to sign up to be a CASA.  It kind of slipped my mind until I came across a webpage with a link to the local CASA site and saw they were accepting applications.  So out of the blue, I just went ahead and applied.

One of the things that concerns me going into this is that I get quite emotional when it comes to children, and to see a child hurting could be a very difficult thing to witness.   But after taking a few steps  back, I convinced myself that I could afford to expose myself to their pain,  knowing that my presence might offer them a bit of comfort.    Thoughout my training, I will be working with like minded people  and I feel that they will be a tremendous resource for me to fall back on and support me through this process.

There is a great need for CASA’s in our family court systems, so if you live in the states and are looking for a way to volunteer in your community, it might be worth checking out.