Adult and children hands holding paper family cutout, family home, foster care, homeless charity support concept
The role of CASA in protecting children in Pennsylvania
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Scott LaMar
Adult and children hands holding paper family cutout, family home, foster care, homeless charity support concept
Airdate: April 25th, 2023
Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children or CASA can play a significant role in the lives of kids who have been abused, neglected or abandoned and in foster care, kinship care or group homes.
The Pennsylvania CASA Conference is being held in Harrisburg Tuesday and Wednesday.
On The Spark we learned more about CASA.
Joining us on the program were Kai Walcott, who was in the foster care system, Megan Jennings, Kai’s court-appointed advocate, and PA CASA Director of Impact Becca Matchett.
Walcott described how her life changed,”I was placed in a different home. It was it was really rough. It was a difficult time of adjustment. One of the hardest things was being placed in a new place with a new family, new rules, new expectations, just being able to adjust to that. So it was it was a little difficult. But the reason why I was placed in care was, unfortunately, my mother, she she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t prepared to be a mother. She struggled with addiction. We moved around a lot. We had a very unstable childhood and very unstable life. And eventually that led to me being placed in care.”
Jennings talked about her role as a CASA volunteer advocate,”In short, I would pretty much just say the voice for the child. That being a volunteer, there’s no hidden agenda. There isn’t. There’s not as much of the policy and, you know, procedures and rules that sometimes caseworkers are kind of, you know, stuck in with how they handle the cases. And I’m more of just a neutral party to kind of keep in contact with everybody involved with the case and report directly to the the judge and the attorneys to hear like the child side in their placement and a different perspective and different perspective as well.”
Matchette talked PA CASA’s role and her part as director of Impact,”We provide training opportunities for the local programs and that it goes to the volunteers directly as well. And we’re also fortunate to have received state funding that is also provided to the local programs. And in addition to that, we provide different opportunities to enhance their advocacy, like our health advocacy program and our trauma informed advocacy.”
