McLean County’s Court Appointed Special Advocates [CASA] program is seeking volunteers as the program expands to Logan County.
CASA trains volunteers to research, investigate and advocate for children who live in harmful environments and who have been recognized by the Child Welfare System.
“It’s about advocating for the child’s needs until they find that permanent place to stay,” said Paige Malloy, a recruiter and trainer for McLean and Logan County CASA.
Malloy said the program supports children who have experienced abuse and/or neglect.
“Oftentimes, we are helping out children who are coming from families with a lot of struggles,” Malloy said. “More often, we are dealing with neglect cases.”
Malloy said CASA is expanding its program to Logan County to reach more children in need.
“The ultimate goal of CASA is to expand this program so that every child in the Child Welfare System has a volunteer—has an advocate,” Malloy said. “Children who have an advocate are more likely to find a safe and permanent home. They’re half as likely to re-enter the foster care system and they’re more likely to succeed in school, to succeed in their behavioral challenges and they’re less likely to be expelled.”
“There’s so many benefits of the program,” Malloy continued.
Malloy said the CASA program served 59 of the 102 counties in Illinois in 2023 and that her program in McLean County served only 63% of the children in the Child Welfare System.
“We need more volunteers so that we can serve more children,” Malloy said. “In Illinois, we’re expanding. The Logan County expansion was only approved earlier in January, so it’s really about getting to more children, just because we’re not as close as we’d like to be.”
Malloy said Logan County’s program is still in need of volunteers and will be in full force once enough volunteers have completed their 30-hour training programs.
“It takes time for us to get all that set up,” Malloy said. “Our next training class starts on Feb. 11, so that’s the soonest we’ll be able to start people in Logan County.”
Malloy said children are often assigned a CASA volunteer after being placed in a foster home. Volunteers must then meet with the child for at least one hour each month while also writing court reports which document how the child is doing and how their situation may or may not be improving.
These volunteers must go through a training program to become court-appointed special advocates who then monitor the children until they find permanent homes.
Volunteers must be at least 23 years old. They will also go through a background check.
The CASA program’s staff provide support, separate from the case supervisor who oversees a case. Advocates assist in writing court reports and complete continued training, according to Malloy. An additional 12 hours of training will need to be completed throughout the duration of a case.
Malloy said there is a strategic process to pairing each volunteer with their assigned child.
“In the training, we talk about providing a trauma-focused lens and also we go through training in culture and identifying how people can help children of a different culture than their own,” Malloy said. “It’s about advocating for their best interests.”
Malloy said CASA’s training explores the development of a child at different ages and how various influences can shape their development.
“We talk a lot about resilience and hope, and the effects that those two things have on children in the system,” Malloy said. “It’s about acknowledging that there is trauma there, accepting that there are things they went through and there are things they may continue to go through and seeing how we can best support them going forward.”
