Over 618,000 children experience abuse or neglect in the United States annually and with hundreds of thousands placed in foster care. Research on youth in foster care consistently demonstrates they are among the most underserved, at-risk and high-risk in our country. Many exhibit multiple characteristics predictive of or correlative to involvement in the juvenile justice system.
Given the specific needs of at-risk children and youth in foster care, there is a significant need to provide children before the court with best-interest advocacy that addresses the risk factors and negative outcomes they experience. Court appointed special advocate (CASA)/guardian ad litem (GAL) volunteers are routinely appointed to serve youth characterized with the highest levels of risk among youth in the child welfare system.
National CASA/GAL Association supports and promotes court-appointed volunteer advocacy for children who have experienced abuse and neglect. In 2021, 939 state and local CASA/GAL programs in 49 states and the District of Columbia recruited, trained and supervised 97,920 volunteers. They worked individually with 242,176 children to ensure that the best interests of the children were known so they could be addressed by the court, child welfare system and community. Studies have demonstrated the life-changing impact of the CASA/GAL model: children are less likely to re-enter the system after their cases have been closed, more likely to do better in school and they and their families are more likely to receive needed services.
The nationwide CASA/GAL network currently does not have the capacity to serve all children, who are before the court due to experiencing abuse or neglect, with best interest advocacy. Only about 40% of eligible children receive the service. To expand volunteer advocacy to more children, National CASA/GAL provides direct technical assistance and training to volunteer advocates and local and state CASA/GAL organizations, awareness and outreach to the public, grant funding to local and state CASA/GAL organizations, and standards and membership requirements linked to a quality assurance system to ensure that programs maintain good governance and the high-quality program management and operations.
Requested funding will provide these important resources and more to the CASA/GAL network: volunteer recruitment, new program and innovation efforts support. Success will be measured by growth in number of children served and volunteers recruited, screened and then trained in the pre-service curriculum as well as increase in the number of children who exit to positive outcomes like reunification, adoption or legal guardianship.