We're sad to announce that Marianne Clauw has resigned as Executive Director of Friends of CASA of Washtenaw County, effective November 4th. We thank her for her years of dedicated service and leadership and wish her all the best in her future endeavors!
November is National Adoption Month, a time to raise awareness about the adoption of children and youth from foster care. This year's initiative focuses on building capacity of adoption professionals to recruit and retain parents for the 107,000 children and youth waiting for permanent families in the U.S. foster care system.
Every November, a Presidential Proclamation launches activities and celebrations to help build awareness of adoption throughout the nation. Thousands of community organizations arrange and host programs, events, and activities to share positive adoption stories, challenge the myths, and draw attention to the thousands of children in foster care who are waiting for permanent families.
To find out more about National Adoption Month please visit:http://www.childwelfare.gov/adoption/nam/
We’ve rocked to country music, jived with Motown, and partied Caribbean style, and one thing remains the same. This party puts the fun back into fun-draiser.
So get ready for big hair, shoulder pads, and silky shirts at the Rockin’ the CASA DISCO – dinner, auction, dance, and casino.
We are recruiting volunteers to join the following event committees:
- Auction, Decorations,
- Marketing/Graphics,
- Entertainment,
- Food & Beverages,
- Sponsorships, and
- Party Hosts (bring friends)
If you are interested in being part of one of our committees please contact Marianne at mclauw@casawashtenaw.org
(Adapted from The Connection Summer 2011, National CASA Association, authored by Charles Lerner)
1. Keep children with their families whenever possible. Easier said than done, but hundreds of thousands of young people are away from their families for causes that are not being adequately addressed in our society. They include poverty, marginalization and resulting factors such as substance abuse and mental illness. Until we more successfully address social conditions that are hurtful to all of us, children will be living out the consequences.
2. Be compassionate with parents. What does it take for you to accept help from others? Most of us would agree that we must trust someone before we are able to accept their help. Change takes time, and delays are not always due to a lack of desire. Our biases can inhibit our empathy for parents and the challenges they face, but it helps to think of the difficulties we ourselves face when trying to make changes in our own lives.
3. Research existing relationships to get children out of foster care as quickly as possible. We want children to return to their families as soon as possible. If they cannot return home, we want to move them out of limbo and into relational, physical and legal permanency. In other words, we want them to have someone they can count on, a place to call home and people they can claim—and who claim them—as family. Experience shows us that people who are known to our children are often the people who will provide them with permanency.
4. Meet children where they are. Some young people are angry with their parents and the world in general. They have not been protected and cared for the way children are entitled to be. That is why taking a “no-fault” approach is essential. Most youth experience sadness, despair and anger. Youth express these emotions through tantrums, school difficulties, running away, getting involved with gangs or using drugs. These are fairly normative responses to what they have gone through. Their behaviors may leave us feeling frustrated and hopeless about their futures. But we must maintain hope—because many of our children have lost it.
5. Make decisions and implement them as though the child were a member of your own family. Time does not move quickly for children when they are away from their families and living in a state of uncertainty. High caseloads and the bureaucracy of the system make it difficult to make things happen as quickly as we would hope. We will not always be able to address the needs of the children we serve as quickly as we want. That is why CASA programs are critical and influential assets in the child welfare system. Magical things happen for children when someone gives them a voice.
For one of our CASA kids, that experience is anything but ordinary. Katie* is fourteen, and is living in her third residential (institutional) placement in the past three years. In 2008, her adoptive family returned her to the custody of the state. They could not deal with her emotional issues, the debris caused by a childhood of neglect and abuse. In social services parlance, it was a “broken adoption”. In 2010, the Washtenaw County Juvenile Court referee asked for a CASA to be assigned to Katie.
It took a year to find a CASA who was able to make the 166-mile round trip to visit Katie every week or two. (Over 20% of our CASA kids live outside Washtenaw County because of the lack of foster homes and residential facilities.)
In early 2011, a CASA stepped forward.
She has been a vital advocate for Katie, and is making sure that she experiences some of the activities of an ordinary childhood. This fall, Katie is playing on a travel soccer team in her community, due to the efforts and persistence of her CASA. The CASA Cinderella Fund** has paid for Katie’s registration, her uniform, and a new soccer ball. We thank this CASA, and all the other CASAs who work so hard for their CASA kids. They are anything but ordinary.
*Name changed for privacy
**Friends of CASA gratefully acknowledges the Kiwanis Club of Downtown Ann Arbor for a Cinderella Fund grant, and those who donated to the Cinderella Fund at Rockin' the CASA 2011.
