There are about 1,100 children currently living in foster care in San Francisco, often moving from one home to the next and changing schools an average of nine times by the age of eighteen. According to the SFCASA program, within two to four years after emancipating from foster care, approximately 51 percent of California foster children will be unemployed; 40 percent will be on public assistance or incarcerated; and 25 percent will be homeless.
Court-Appointed Special Advocates — CASA — are part of a program of an independent nonprofit organization that operates under the authority of the Judicial Council of California and rules of local courts, whose mission is to provide the abused and neglected children in the foster care system with trained community volunteers to speak on their behalf and in their best interest in the court room.
“The state does not do a particularly good job raising children,” said SFCASA Executive Director Sally Coates. “There’s a whole lot of research being done about the extent to which you should put a child in foster care versus leaving them home and bringing services to the family in the home, rather than separating parties.”
One case in particular came to mind for Coates when asked about the situations with which CASAs and their foster children are faced.
“We had one young woman who at age 16 was pregnant, and the foster family had done nothing in terms of prenatal care, including signing her up for the lunch program that was offered at school,” recalled Coates. “So she was 16, pregnant, not eating, and had no maternity clothes. When she was assigned a CASA volunteer, she was immediately given better food and a doctor. It’s those things that seem so obvious to many parents, and not obvious to some people in the foster care world.”
CASAs are assigned to a single foster child for an average of two years and 10 months, who visit the child on a weekly basis. The advocates help children with homework, attend sporting events, and bring them to appointments and extracurricular activities.
“When you’re a youth in foster care, and you may be moved from place to place or school to school, to finally have one consistent and caring adult in your life is extremely helpful,” said Coates. “It’s an anchor, really. Not only that, think about the emotional trauma of being removed from your family.”
Volunteers undergo 36 hours of classroom training to learn what it takes to be part of SFCASA, and an additional four hours of visits to court rooms and similar nonprofit groups. Professionals from a variety of fields attend the classes to educate the volunteers on topics from substance abuse to physical abuse. The volunteers become mandated abuse reporters, and are sworn in as officers of the court, which allows each volunteer access to medical and educational records of the child.
“That’s the biggest difference between CASA and Big Brother, Big Sister,” said Coates. “Being a CASA volunteer, you take on a huge responsibility. Every six months when a child’s case is called, the CASA writes a court report, and in many cases, that’s the first thing the judge will read because it’s the one person who’s been with the child objectively.”
Amanda Clarke, a Western Addition resident and event planner, decided to become a CASA volunteer after hearing about the experience from her sister who had joined CASA years earlier.
“One of the things I liked about CASA was the legal aspect of it. You can affect change in a way you couldn’t with Big Brother, Big Sister,” said Clarke. “One of the lawyers that presented during training explained it so well: the judge is going to make the most important decision in this child’s life, but that person actually has the most power and the least information, and the family has the most information and the least power.
“A volunteer‘s role is to meet all of these people and the teachers and social worker and analyze the whole situation and give a thoughtful report back to the judge, so the judge is more informed and can really see what’s right for the family.”
Clarke has been assigned a unique case in which she is a CASA volunteer for two children who are sisters, with whom she has been working for 18 months.
She takes the girls, who are ages nine and 11, to dance lessons, swimming lessons in the summer, and to play outdoors. “They have a bright, wide range of interests,” said Clarke. “They’re open to pretty much everything.”
The CASA program was founded in Seattle approximately 30 years ago, and is now one of over 900 affiliate agencies within the National CASA Association. The San Francisco CASA was founded in 1991. That year, 11 volunteers graduated from the program.
Today, SFCASA has approximately 325 volunteers, consequently serving 325 foster children each year, with approximately 90 cases waiting to be matched to an advocate. Each case is referred to CASA by Unified Family Court, the Human Services Agency, or by children's attorneys. While SFCASA grows each year, they still haven’t reached their goal of giving all foster children the opportunity to thrive.
“Some foster children are in situations that are working well, but at least half of them are not — if not more — so there are between 300-500 kids that we should be serving,” explained Coates. “We’d like to grow big enough that we can serve every child in the foster care system that needs a CASA.”
“It’s really demanding,” said Clarke. “You need to be very dedicated to it; but it is by far the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. Not to be too cliché, but I definitely get more out of it than I put in, and I think the children and CASA think I give a lot, too.”
SFCASA’s annual budget of 1.2 million dollars is raised every year through foundations, individuals, corporations, and two fundraising events. The next fundraiser, the Fostering Change Luncheon, will be held May 16 at the Four Seasons Hotel from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. SFCASA will be honoring Judge Donna Hitchens, who was a dependency court judge for 20 years. The event will be hosted by the Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch.
More information about becoming an SFCASA volunteer or about making a donation, as well as the wish list, can be found at www.sfcasa.org.
