These volunteers can mean success for foster kids, but more are needed

Mercedes Anderson, 20, remembers when she first learned she would have a special advocate. At 15 , she’d been in and out of foster care and didn’t want another stranger in her life.

That changed as she got to know Ashley Thorne.

“I built a real connection with her and really, truly felt like it was a family,” Anderson said. “She actually took a step forward, went the extra mile to show me she actually cared and just be there for me.”

Thorne is now advocacy director for CASA of Sedgwick County, an organization that trains volunteers to walk alongside foster children during their time in care.

The demand for court appointed special advocates (CASAs) far exceeds the number of volunteers available.

Only 143 of the 1,200 foster children in Sedgwick County now have a court-appointed special advocate. Out of those children, about 800 are not placed with family, making the need for an advocate greater.

Thorne and others are determined to change that, particularly since the data shows that having a CASA can mean the difference between success and failure for a foster child.

There’s a number that Thorne likes to share: If just two people volunteered from each church, synagogue, mosque or other faith group in Wichita, every foster child who doesn’t live with family could have an advocate.

‘You found me’

Like many foster children, Anderson was behind in school when she first received a CASA. She ended up graduating a year early, one of the first people in her family to gain a high school diploma.

Children with CASAs in Sedgwick County have a graduation rate of 80 percent when they age out of foster care. That’s compared with a 73 percent graduation rate for the Wichita school district — and a 43.4 percent graduation rate for the average foster child in Wichita.

At a national level, children with CASAs are more likely to be adopted, half as likely to reenter foster care and less likely to spend time in long-term foster care.

Those advocates are everyday volunteers, most with full-time jobs, who go through 30 hours of training and then work with a single foster child (or sometimes siblings) for a few hours each month. That can mean telling a judge what the child wants, making sure case workers file paperwork, finding a donated coat, throwing a birthday party or ensuring the child is able to participate in school activities.

It also means building a relationship with the child, being a constant even if the child moves between homes, schools and case workers.

Thorne had one CASA volunteer tell her that the little boy she worked with would run up to her saying, “You found me, you found me.”

“He’s never had someone to follow him wherever he goes,” Thorne said.

For Anderson, being in foster care meant having 12 different homes, nine schools, six social workers and three different judges.

She had one CASA, Thorne, who she keeps in touch with today.

Outreach

Juvenile Court Judge Kevin Smith wishes he could appoint a CASA to every case with a foster child.

He already appoints them frequently, but CASA has fallen behind on honoring the court orders because it doesn’t have enough volunteers.

So now, Smith and Thorne are taking the story of CASAs to churches, political groups, rotary clubs and more.

“People complain and they whine about how DCF (the Department of Children and Families) is losing kids and kids are running away and this kind of thing, but all it takes is private citizens stepping forward and we’ll see an immediate impact,” Smith said. “We know what works. We know that CASAs make a difference.”

CASA programs operate in 72 of Kansas’ counties, serving about 2,000 of the state’s 7,000 foster children.

The Department of Children and Families has also targeted faith groups and others in order to find more foster parents, launching a recruitment campaign with www.fosterkskids.org.

“It’s a challenge for the nation and a lot of individuals are seeing that the faith-based community has an opportunity to provide a good environment for the kids who are in crisis and they have taken a real interest in stepping in and providing resources,” said Peggy Mast, director of faith-based and community initiatives with the Department of Children and Families.

Mast said she’s seen church groups step up in other ways: some provide care packages to foster children, some organize play dates for foster kids to give families a break. Sometimes court appointed advocates will work to recruit foster families.

‘One child’

Meaghan and Jeremy Koci were already foster parents when they decided to become CASAs. The children they fostered were under the age of five, but they also wanted to help older foster children. About a year ago, they became co-CASAs for a large group of siblings.

A CASA needs a heart to help and the willingness to commit the time, Jeremy said. Everything else can be taught.

“If you knew you could make a difference in one child’s life, just one child, why wouldn’t you do it?” Meaghan asked.

Information on how to become a CASA in Sedgwick County is available at www.casaofsedgwickcounty.org. Information on becoming a CASA in other parts of Kansas is available at www.kansascasa.org.

This story was originally published February 4, 2018 at 8:59 AM with the headline "These volunteers can mean success for foster kids, but more are needed."