The Los Angeles court-appointed special advocates organization parted ways with its leader last week, a prominent voice for racial justice in the child welfare system who grew up in foster care and has decried her dismissal.
Charity Chandler-Cole has led the local CASA program for the past four years. But in a message sent to its mailing list on June 18, CASA of Los Angeles stated that Cole, 39, was no longer working with the organization, and thanked her for her service.
A follow-up email sent to The Imprint and signed by three board members cited a need for a leadership that “fully aligns” with the nonprofit organization’s goals.
“The CASA Board determined that there was a fundamental misalignment between Dr. Chandler-Cole’s approach and CASA’s mission — ultimately leading to a loss of confidence,” stated Alaynè Marie Sampson, Aishwarya Bhave and Jeff Newman.
In an interview, Chandler-Cole said she refused a request to resign before being fired “because of my bold leadership.”
The former foster youth said some board members described her reform-minded vision as “too big” for the organization, and raised concerns about a decrease in children matched with a court-appointed volunteer. That was not a result of her leadership, she said, but due to a dramatic decline in the number of children entering foster care countywide.
“I was not fired for underperformance,” Chandler-Cole wrote in a subsequent email. “I consistently pushed for the board to look beyond surface-level metrics like volunteer counts and raw caseloads — and instead focus on the quality of advocacy, the experiences of youth and families, and the measurable outcomes that result from our support.”
One of the largest local CASA programs in the country, the Los Angeles County group has about 1,000 volunteers that serve about 1,200 foster children, according to its website.
Court-appointed special advocates, or CASAs, are trained volunteers who make recommendations about children’s “best interest” in court cases, including whether they should be reunited with their families. Appointed by dependency court judges, they gather information to help judges find appropriate placements and ensure foster children receive suitable mental health care and education.
Although the national CASA association has had problems with its federal funding, many of its independent affiliates remain widely admired charities with high-profile private donors and longstanding support from taxpayers and lawmakers. Unlike family court lawyers and social workers who often carry heavy caseloads, volunteers are typically assigned to just one child at a time.
But critics have called out the role of these non-professional volunteers in some parts of the country, and questioned the scientific evidence for CASA leaders’ positive claims about their impact. National association data show they are typically white, college-educated women, who write court reports and weigh in on major life decisions of foster children who are disproportionately Black and Indigenous and come from low-income communities.
In 2021, amid the George Floyd-inspired reckoning over racial injustice, Chandler-Cole was named as the executive director of L.A.’s branch of the nationwide network of local CASA groups, the first Black woman who had experienced foster care to hold that position.
Upon her naming, then-U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, now the mayor of Los Angeles, heralded the move in a news release.
“Charity is the right leader at the perfect time for CASA/LA,” Bass said. “She is a visionary who will be a tireless champion for the program and the children and families they serve.”
She had a unique perspective as someone who spent her formative years in government custody. Growing up in an impoverished South Los Angeles neighborhood, Chandler-Cole entered foster care as a teenager and ended up in the juvenile justice system after she was caught stealing underwear for her sister at age 16.
She went on to graduate from college, earn a doctorate in educational leadership for social justice from Loyola Marymount University and worked for two nonprofit health care organizations. Chandler-Cole was also a founding board member of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, an advocacy group for formerly incarcerated people.
During her tenure with CASA/LA, she developed training for volunteers that tackled racial bias in the child welfare system, served on several oversight commissions and helped lead the county’s mandated reporting reform effort. Under her leadership, CASA/LA partnered with another local nonprofit organization to develop a 20-bed residence in downtown Los Angeles for homeless young women with children.
Chandler-Cole also earned a reputation as an outspoken critic of the child welfare system, describing herself as an “abolitionist” who wanted volunteers to understand the historical context of slavery, mass incarceration and the foster care system.
Her views were clearly stated upon her hiring.
“If our CASAs don’t understand why these systems were created in the first place and that they weren’t created to really address the needs of our communities, then they can’t really go in understanding how to navigate this system that is not created to help young people from Black and brown communities,” Chandler-Cole said in a 2021 interview with this outlet.
Last month, she was featured in a profile in the Blueprint, a UCLA public affairs magazine. “Abolition,” she said, “means people staying together. It means family. It means having a system that does exist that actually helps children that are being abused, that actually helps families that need support, that includes families in the decision making.”
Chandler-Cole said she plans to continue working in the child welfare field, and described new ventures, including developing software that “uses data and AI to amplify youth voice and rights, reunify families faster and drive better outcomes for system-impacted populations.”
