(Spirit Lake)– The Court Appointed Special Advocate program, or CASA, is in need of volunteers in Dickinson county. Program Coordinator Melissa Loehr tells KUOO news CASA volunteers are assigned by the court to regularly visit children who have been taken from their homes and speak on their behalf at court hearings. She says the agency itself provides the training the volunteers need…
“Most importantly what they need to have is that they need to have a passion for children first of all. Everything else as far as the actual work goes, we train them to actually perform the roles and the tasks and we use the national CASA curriculum in order to get that training, so they all go through 30 hours of pre-service training before actually coming on as a CASA and the final step to do that after training is to technically go to the court and get sworn in by the local juvenile court judge.”
Loehr says CASAs frequently are the only consistent, positive presence a child has while in foster care…
“Research has shown that with the use of a CASA that kids are moved more quickly throughout the system. The system itself is overwhelmed, over burdened. But by having a CASA that is just devoted to that one case, to that one family, they can really advocate for them and help them move through the juvenile court system much quicker which in the end results in a safe and permanent home for the children.”
Anyone interested in becoming a court appointed special advocate or who would like more information should contact Loehr at (712) 262-0271. You can can also go on line to childadvocacy.iowa.gov.
