Dallas CASA provides crucial support to child abuse victims

One evening, local volunteer Ron Craig visited the foster home of five children whose futures were being settled in court.

Craig represented two of the children as a Court Appointed Special Advocate through East Dallas nonprofit Dallas CASA, building relationships, gathering information and helping the judge determine whether the kids can go home to their parents.

The three other children in the foster home did not have a CASA representative.

As Craig and his two children were leaving for dinner, one of the others stopped him and asked, “Mr. Ron, why doesn’t anyone care about me?”

“I had to explain that I was the CASA for the other two children but had not been assigned to him,” Craig says. “He listened and asked, ‘How do I get a CASA?’ He couldn’t understand why no one seemed to care about him, and I couldn’t either. How could I explain that he didn’t have a CASA because there aren’t enough volunteers to help? It’s not just about going out to do special things; it’s about knowing someone cares about you and will actually come see you during the loneliest time in your life.”

Dallas CASA director Beverly Levy tells Craig’s story often because, to her, the story is a perfect illustration for an underlying problem: There simply aren’t enough CASA volunteers to represent every child in foster care.

[quote align=”right” color=”#000000″]”It’s not just about going out to do special things; it’s about knowing someone cares about you and will actually come see you during the loneliest time in your life.”[/quote]

Almost 2,000 children in Dallas have been removed from their homes and placed in foster care, according to CASA statistics. Of those, a little less than half have CASA representatives.

Levy and her team hope to change that.

‘A powerful voice and a hand to hold’
On any given day, the Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center in Dallas teems with lawyers, witnesses, families, Child Protective Service workers and other people waiting to see the judges. Among them are dozens of CASA volunteers, chatting with the other members of their case, comparing notes and swapping information. Who are these people, and why are they here, adding more opinions to an already complicated court system?

When a child welfare case goes to court, several people become involved. CPS workers investigate the families and try to ensure the children’s safety, but each worker has dozens of cases at a time.

In the mid-1970s, a Superior Court Judge in Seattle, Wash., became increasingly concerned that he didn’t have enough information from lawyers and the overwhelmed child welfare system to make life-altering decisions for abused and neglected children. So, he appointed community volunteers as friends of the court to advocate on behalf of the children. Dallas CASA was one of three pilot programs established in 1979, and in 1980, the first batch of volunteers graduated and was sworn in.

Partnering with CPS, CASA volunteers get to know the children they represent on a personal level, gathering as much information as possible from all parties involved in a case, including the families. They write reports for the judges, and make suggestions for whether a child should go home or into foster care. Then, they advocate in court on the child’s behalf. CASA volunteers focus on the child’s safety to help ensure he or she is on a path to the best life possible.

They are “a powerful voice and a hand to hold,” Levy says.

“Another reason that CASA is so important is that this child who didn’t do anything wrong doesn’t know he didn’t do anything wrong, and he sees all these different strangers in his life, and there’s no one consistent,” Levy says. “He needs someone to say, ‘You’re going to be OK. I’m going to stay with you until you find a safe home, and I’m going to make sure the judge has all the information he needs to make the best decisions about you.’ And that’s the role of the CASA volunteer.”

To be a CASA, or not to be a CASA
Dallas CASA is full of everyday people who’ve heard the harrowing tales of child abuse in the news or from a friend and wondered, “What can I do to help?”

“And then they find us,” Levy says. “When you see what the issues are and you know there’s a way to help, it’s really magical.”

Some people shy away from becoming a CASA volunteer because they don’t know enough — or anything — about the court system. That’s OK, Levy says.

“You have to be able to write a report, you have to be able to communicate, you have to be consistent and objective, and most of all you have to have a caring heart.”

CASA staff members, experienced in social work, screen the volunteers, put them through 30 hours of training, and then supervise them after they’re sworn in.

Bonnie Cuellar, a Lakewood neighbor who saw her first CASA case conclude in November, says she was nervous when she started.

“They call you, and you think, ‘Am I really ready?’ and then you dive in, and you’re fine,” Cuellar says. “In my class, it was across the board — you have attorneys, stay-at-home moms, educators, business people.”

Cuellar says the training classes, available in the mornings and the evenings, are thorough and help volunteers break down information about the court and welfare systems. The classes teach volunteers which questions to ask and where to get certain documents or services, and they also help the volunteers understand their own cultural biases so they can be more effective advocates.

“And once you apply it, it all makes sense,” Cuellar says. “Then you see the impact of [the program], and those pieces just fall into place.”

Cuellar became a CASA volunteer in 2011 and took the case of a newborn boy who had to be placed in foster care.

“You try to keep them in the family, as long as it’s a safe environment,” she says. “We didn’t have that in this case. Luckily, he ended up in a very loving, caring foster home.”

Once it became clear the child would not get to go home to his parents, Cuellar and CPS began searching for a forever home for the baby. This year, two years after the case began, he was adopted, and Cuellar has been beside him the whole way.

“It’s critical to facilitate and to make those recommendations to move the process along,” Cuellar says.

A national study found that children who have CASA volunteers spend 7 and a half fewer months in foster care than children who don’t, according to CASA statistics. Also, more than 90 percent of children with CASA volunteers never again enter the child welfare system.

CASA volunteers can choose their cases, and many first-time advocates take easier cases, working with supervisors.

East Dallas neighbor Sandra Teter has been an advocate since 1997. She has taken 19 cases and helped more than 34 kids, including siblings.

“When I read a case, I’m always scared the first time I read it, and I’m always angry the first time I read it,” Teter says, “but the process is laid out so well, you just take it one step at a time.”

She also has learned along the way. During Teter’s second case, she had a light-bulb moment that shifted how she viewed her role as a CASA.

During her second case, the courts considered taking the child away from its mother, but Teter testified at trial supporting the mother, who had sought an intense, in-house program for abuse victims that helped turn her life around, Teter says.

When Teter saw the positive changes the mother was making, she advocated that the mother and child be reunited. Because of Teter’s recommendation, the mother retained her parental rights.

[quote align=”left” color=”#000000″]“When I first started I thought it was more just following the court system and going to hearings, making sure I showed up and knew the answers, but what I’ve learned is that I can really make a difference to the children and to the families.”[/quote]

“When I first started I thought it was more just following the court system and going to hearings, making sure I showed up and knew the answers,” Teter says, “but what I’ve learned is that I can really make a difference to the children and to the families.”

The involvement can make working as an advocate a much bigger time commitment than other volunteer opportunities, which is another factor that keeps people from becoming CASAs. However, Teter, who works for herself as an employment recruiter, says she’s always felt the time requirement manageable.

“You know the court dates two months in advance,” Teter says. “So you can make time for your court hearing. The biggest time commitment is just being there to be a really hands-on CASA.”

To Cuellar, the long-term commitment is a big draw. She has volunteered with local organizations, all of which were rewarding, she says, but she wanted something more.

“I’ve been there when my [CASA] kid crawled, when he walked, when he ate,” Cuellar says. “It’s unlike any volunteer work I’ve ever done.”

Cuellar is one of Dallas CASA’s coveted Spanish-speaking advocates, something it desperately needs. If a judge requests it, and there isn’t one available, Dallas CASA must turn down the case.

Levy says that some people hesitate to get involved with CASA because they’re afraid they’ll become too emotionally attached to the child in their case.

Cuellar did become emotionally attached to her little boy, but she believes it made her a better advocate.

“It’s bittersweet because you don’t want any child to go through that, but you see that you’re an important piece of this process,” she says. “If you do it right, you do bond. It does tug at you, and it should. And then you want to be a part of whatever makes this better.”

Room to grow
In November, Dallas CASA announced its $37 million campaign to recruit more Court Appointed Special Advocates during its annual Champion of Children Award Dinner.

The goal of the campaign, “Abused Children Can’t Wait,” is to ensure that eventually every child in foster care has a CASA representative, which means Dallas CASA has to double the number of volunteers within the next few years.

“The reason CASA is important is because Texas has been remarkably low in per-capita spending on CPS,” says Dallas County Judge William Mazur Jr., who sees hundreds of child abuse cases go through his courts every year.

“There’s way too much turnover [at CPS], and there’s too few workers. We’re without a doubt not paying them enough, and once we take possession of a child and become their parent, we’ve got to treat them better than we do, and that takes help.”

An abuse case takes 12 to 18 months from beginning to end, and sometimes a child will have two or three different caseworkers, Mazur says. It’s easy for information to get lost in the shuffle. Other times the child is transferred from home to home.

“If there’s a CASA, they don’t change,” Mazur says. “They stay throughout, and they can be the consistent source of the information that needs to be passed along. Plus, this child has been taken away from everything familiar, and everything in the room is changing. Wouldn’t it be nice to have something consistent?”

Ultimately it falls to the judge to determine the future of the child in question.

“There are some cases that you can tell are going to be very high maintenance, and I just cringe when I can’t appoint a CASA,” Mazur says. “If you had the responsibly that I’ve got, of trying to take those children through this system, you can’t say that you wouldn’t want more help.”

With more volunteers, Dallas CASA will need more office space. The organization already has maxed out its building at 2815 Gaston with the current staff and volunteers. So it has begun construction on a new building at Swiss and Texas in East Dallas that will be three times the size. It should be complete in spring of 2014.

Dallas CASA has raised $30 million through individual and corporate donors, and the campaign needs $7 million more to reach its goal.

“These kids have been waiting too long, and they just can’t wait anymore,” Levy say.