The MN State Guardian ad Litem Board is advocating the elimination of the
volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) Guardian Ad Litem program
and replacing volunteers with an all paid staff program.
KARA and other CASA volunteer supporters think this is a terrible idea.
It has been stated by program management that CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate)
volunteer time spent with abused and neglected children is of no value.
Ask that question of any child removed from the only home they have ever known passing through the cold scarey institution of judges, courts, foster and group homes.
Think about being five or ten years old and taken from your birth home and living with people you don’t know and multiple new adult managers come and go after short periods.
Plenty of data Stories and literature provide proof that a trusted adult makes a huge difference in the life of a child that has been unfortunate enough to grow up in a toxic home. When Foster children are taken from the only home they’ve ever known and the adults they know often disappear.
The CASA guardian ad Litem program has been a singular exception to this scary part of Child Protective Services. It is also the only part of CPS that is built on the concept that a community volunteer spending time with children abandoned to the reality of growing up without a birth family is an important positive feature for the child. Minnesota’s Guardian Ad Litem management’s position is that this is not important. Because it’s not important to them, they wish to end the program and change to an all paid staff.
Since 1981, thousands of community volunteers have donated many thousands of volunteer hours getting to know and advocate for Minnesota’s at-risk children. End the program, these volunteers disappear and no more will follow.
Eliminating CASA volunteers will result in LESS community awareness, institutional transparency, public involvement and an incalculable loss of volunteer advocacy time spent with abused and neglected children stuck in the Child Protection System.
Most of us are lucky and know little about the suffering of abused children
or how Child Protective Services function.
Child abuse takes place in the home and is invisible.
It’s a family matter. Our cultural norms leave treatment of children to parents unless abuse causes the probability of “Imminent harm” to a child.
We assume the County system responds effectively to reports of child abuse to save children living in toxic homes of violence, abuse and trauma.
People in Child Protection Service know how often these assumptions are wrong.
Imagine being a child in Child Protection and waking up in a group or foster home where you don’t know anyone. Nothing is familiar to you. The adults in your life come and go. Community volunteer GALs (CASA guardian ad litems) become a known and trusted adult in your journey through the system.
In fairness, this author has been a guardian ad litem volunteer and CASAMN board member for since 1996. I know the value to the child of a familiar and trusted volunteer willing to take the time to help guide them through what are often years of foster care, group homes and courts.
Program Management arguments for ending the CASA Volunteer program;
- Certain Key Performance Efficiency Indicators (KPI metrics) favor staff performance and a professional workforce over volunteers.
- High-cost of the CASA program management – and there is no money for it.
Point One is partially true, but the reasoning is questionable and addressable.
The Volunteer CASA volunteer program has been underserved for years. More importantly, Key Performance Indicators being used in this decision have little to do with outcomes that value issues important to the child. Current KPI’s almost completely value the efficiency of checked boxes indicating employee efficiency and cost containment at the cost of measuring outcomes and child friendly concerns.
Managing Volunteer program GALs has been under addressed for years. Volunteer guardians need to be managed differently than paid staff GALs.
Training for both groups is the same. Volunteers and staff are equally professional
arguably, volunteers come to the GAL program from professional fields &
with greater life experience than
staff hired at $21/hr.
Over 40 years, this Minnesota program has shifted from including paid staff in the management style/strategy of volunteers to including volunteers in the management style/strategy of paid staff.
In our initial conversations with GAL Director Vic Walker, we (CASAMN BOARD) discovered that management was demanding Volunteers take as many cases as paid staff (30 cases). This has never been the CASA volunteer model.
Demanding high caseloads destroys the core concept of volunteers having much more time available to work with each case child and a big reason the program has been so successful. Time spent with children caught up in the courts and CPS is a big benefit this community volunteer program brings to an overwhelmed system.
Demanding high caseloads puts a crushing load on volunteers committed to helping at risk kids in their community (but not 100 + children at one time). By definition, volunteer GALs invest significantly more personal time and attention to their caseload kids than paid staff are able.
Paid GAL staff are required to oversee at 30 or more cases representing 100 – 150 children to be kept safe every month.
Some administrators and legislators believe 100+ 150 abused and neglected children can be well served by one child advocate. KARA & CASAMN do not agree. What will happen when budgets are cut in lean times? Caseloads continue to climb. When there are no volunteers or a program to find them, will staff be required to manage 200-300 children each month? What other options exist?
We believe children and youth unfortunate enough to end up in Child Protective Services need more help from the community – not less.
We also believe that much of if not most school performance failure and juvenile crime evolve from
traumatized youth passing through CPS without receiving the help they need to lead a productive life.
MN’s own former Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz has remarked that,
“90% of the youth in Juvenile Justice have passed through CPS”
To argue that at risk children need less help than they are receiving today will be hard to support. What we know of school performance, crime and mental health measures shows a very needy child population.
It is because Volunteer CASA GAL’s take only a few cases that they can invest significant time and energy their case children. Abused and neglected children need more time with familiar trusted adults that volunteer to be their advocates. CASA volunteers do this work because they have the time to invest in their community’s children and a commitment to do it.
There is great value to the additional time and energy volunteers bring to the program.
We must use caution if we choose efficiency of management over quality of care. We should strive for both.
Point Two, the financial argument, could be determined by a cost benefit analysis.
Cost/value also needs to be understood in a broader context. Former CASA volunteer Denise Graves was so moved by her experience she donated millions of her own dollars to build housing for youth aging out of foster care. Hundreds of other retired CASA volunteers have gone on to do more for State Ward Children after leaving the program. While this value is often hard to discover or calculate, it should be a factor in the cost benefit analysis.
Volunteer CASA’s require a modified approach to hiring and supervision. There will be a cost to this – as there is a cost to the hiring and supervision of staff.
GAL training is the same, but managing volunteers is different than managing paid staff. It is because these recently made available large State dollars allowing for growing paid staff that management’s path of least resistance is to manage paid staff. It should not go unnoticed that the volunteer program helped the program find the dollars for more staff. More importantly, it should not go unnoticed that program management never stated or implied that it would use those dollars to end the volunteer program.
To not execute a cost benefit analysis before ending an effective and established program that has been saving MN children and youth for 40 years is a powerful example of terrible public policy allowed to happen without public awareness or input.
- CASAMN has only been informed of these issues and allowed to enter the discussion this past year.
- CASAMN has offered to be involved in (financially and administratively) to facilitate oversight and needed resources. CASAMN is offering to help with recruitment and oversight/training. The lack of transparency (of system results like graduation rates, crime, poverty & homelessness of State Ward children) make fiscal arguments tenuous at best. The financial argument being made by program management implicitly undervalues community involvement, volunteer time and resources and greater public awareness. The cost to our community of underserving these children can be seen in the violence reported in our media, school underperformance and racial disparity (most recently; 24% of Black third graders are reading at grade level in Hennepin County – one of many available related negative statistics and related racial disparities).
*There is value in an involved community with greater awareness of complex and otherwise invisible issues that are impacting their public schools, health, and safety. Uninvolved communities do not see the problem. If there is no perceived problem, there is no need for a solution. Volunteers bring in the community, they reflect the community, and they give us the best opportunity to grow diversity.
One of the most significant concerns currently in the community is that the State is removing African American children from their parents at a rate higher than that of white families. The volunteer program allows the State to address that issue by bringing in real people from the community. Relying on paid “experts” to a greater extent by eliminating volunteers will not increase trust and confidence in the system.
*Eliminating volunteers in the GAL program removes one of the only personal, community elements from MN”s child protection system. Abused children in the system feel isolated and institutionalized. State Ward children live in foster and group homes. Their lives are managed by paid for staff and the courts. The turnover of adults in their lives is a constant factor that make them feel like a “thing” being handled at the State level.
*Child Protective Services, like schools, healthcare and law enforcement, have been and are over-stressed by the COVID pandemic. Our communities today have more and bigger problems providing adequate services than I have seen in my lifetime.
*Children locked into toxic homes for longer periods with less access to mandated reporters (like teachers) are suffering more than they were pre-COVID. The impact the lockdown is having on at-risk children and families is not transparent and it is under-reported. During COVID, the severity and frequency of child abuse has increased appreciably.
This argument is about better managing resources we have spent decades building – not how eliminating effective programs can make management operate with less stress. To change the negative stories and statistics that represent at risk State Ward children in MN we need to do more of what works, not less. Less in not more.
CASA GALs have become (by management decision) the less favored stepchild of the only recently fully funded staff GAL program. The volunteer program was instrumental in helping find the funds for more paid staff because of the need for more Guardians. Program management never stated or implied that if funding were received they would end the CASA volunteer program.