CASA

I have CASA training on Thursday night. CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocate which is a fancy name for a volunteer who is appointed a case of a foster child or children in which the volunteer interviews all parties involved and makes a recommendation to the judge of behalf of the best interest of the child. The training is 30 hours and then there is a swear in with a judge (for me in Clark County) and a case is assigned. The first case that I get will be more of a shadowing of an experienced CASA volunteer and then I will be on my own. I will start by observing juvenile hall in Clark County in a couple of weeks.

 

Clark County Juvenile Hall.

I’m really looking forward to this. I’ve been thinking a lot about foster children in the county that I live in. Due to the way my life schedule is, I can’t really be a foster parent at this time, so I have been talking with others about different options. A few weeks ago I was at a party with a few detectives, lawyers and a Multnomah County judge. The Multnomah County juvenile judge and I spoke for about 30 minutes on foster care and her thoughts on the matter. I let her know I wanted to be a foster parent but couldn’t do it right now. She mentioned CASA and I knew immediately that was something I wanted to do. I looked up CASA on the web and inquired about the local chapter. It’s at the YWCA downtown Vancouver which is funny because I have looked thru the YWCA web page many times looking for a place to serve in Vancouver and had never found anything that I really wanted to do. Anyway, I’m really interested to see if this works out with my schedule and if it is something I can do.