CASA

By Michael Fitzgerald

Labeled a “high-risk grantee” for more than a year, the National CASA/GAL Association received new federal awards this month.

An Imprint review of the research finds that rigorous evaluation of court-appointed child advocates is limited, while taxpayer funding is up.

The stepped-up oversight has resulted in staff furloughs at the 39-year-old National CASA/GAL Association for Children.

When she turned 21 last year, seven years after entering foster care in New York City, Jeanette Rivera suddenly found herself fending for herself — and her three young children.  “They didn’t wait to make sure that I was ready to be on my own, they didn’t make sure I had food, that my bills were paid or that I even understood how to pay my portion of my rent,” Rivera said.

Sixteen months after the heart-breaking death of its long-time executive director, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute has hired its next permanent leader, who inherits the challenge of steadying an organization amidst a pandemic.

My name is Lauren Werner and I am a senior at a California state university. My educational aspirations consist of acquiring a bachelor’s degree in international studies with a concentration in global culture, and a double minor in political science and French.

We think all the time about the major traumas that impact the  youth in our care — their removal from families, the abuse and neglect they may have experienced, and the uncertainty and cyclical upheavals that too often dominate their lives.

On Dec. 3, a 28-year-old black mother lost her parental rights to her four children – ages 1 to 9 – in a Minnesota courtroom, just outside the Twin Cities. Instead of opening presents with their mother, the children spent Christmas with a white family two hours away.