47 years ago, the CASA volunteer Guardian ad Litem program came to Minnesota. At the time, some children were not able to have a CASA Guardian assigned because there were not enough volunteers to keep up with growing caseloads. This CASA remembers between 50 and 100 children throughout the year not having a CASA to advocate for them in court.
Because of this shortage of CASAs, the program began to hire staff GALs to supplement community CASA volunteers To meet the Federal mandate that all children should have an advocate in court.
In 1996, the Guardian ad Litem program operated with a total budget of $3.8 million statewide dealing with about 4,800 child abuse or neglect cases resulting in about 400 volunteers and 3 or 4 full time GAL employees managing a statewide caseload of roughly 10,000 children 2.
By 2017 there were about 350 volunteers, the program budget increased to 33 million dollars to pay for 265 full time employees, managing 8000 cases representing 17,000 children. 1
In 2017, Minnesota child protection agencies received 84,148 reports of child maltreatment18.
In 2024, Minnesota received over 82,000 reports of possible child abuse and neglect.3. Because of Family First legislation providing services instead of investigations, cases dropped to 4000 (1/2 of the 2017 cases) and were managed by 247 FTE’s and 12 remaining CASAs after management’s failed attempt to eliminate the CASA volunteer program.
In 2024, the GAL budget expanded to 46 million dollars – an increase of 40%, managing 24% more paid staff and still leaving growing numbers (300) of children without a Guardian ad Litem (due to shortage of staff and volunteers).
It’s noteworthy that historical retention of CASAs has been between 4.9 years and 8.1 years compared to paid staff turnover today including supervisors at almost 50% with many open positions going unfilled because of the labor shortage and difficulty of the work. It takes about two years to train and learn how to be a good Guardian ad Litem. That’s when staff GALs are quitting today.
It appears that current management is still slow walking the onboarding of volunteers at a time our state is experiencing severe problems with child safety and the highest number of children without a community advocate for them in court. Four years of destructive behavior towards a nationally successful program that has served hundreds of thousands of Minnesota children at the most dangerous and frightening time of their young life. Who would do this to them and why? To those in charge, please review the initial complaints made during the 3 year effort to end the volunteer program.
More about the costs incurred by the State by not having a Guardian ad Litem.
You and I and our legislators need to solve this problem.
It is the only way it will be solved.
WHEN YOU Share KARA’s reporting with FRIENDS, INSTAGRAM & FACEBOOK and most of all,
your State Representative (find them here) change will come.
This article submitted by former CASA volunteer & KARA board member Mike Tikkanen
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