CASA Volunteer Training: What to Expect
Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) volunteers come from all walks of life to advocate for youth in the Orange County foster care system. Many CASAs have spent a lifetime working with children as teachers or counselors, but others come to CASA without ever having spent any time at all with kids. Some CASAs have raised children of their own, and some have not. Some advocates are young adults just starting their career, while others are empty-nesters looking for a way to give back to their community. Some CASA volunteers were formerly in foster care themselves.
The one thing every CASA has in common is the comprehensive training they receive to help prepare them for their role as an advocate. This training is free and covers a range of topics including the roles and responsibilities of the position, the inner-workings of the dependency system, cultural sensitivity, childhood development, and the impact of trauma on children, amongst a range of other topics.
CASA Training Manager, Alaina Hess says, “You don’t need to have experience working with this population or even be a parent to do this work, we’re just looking for kind, emotionally healthy adults who are safe and want to show up for youth. Just be open and ready for whatever the case may be. Just showing up for someone is what really matters.”
The CASA program is truly unique because, in addition to a traditional mentorship role, CASA volunteers are trained to serve as advocates, sworn-in by a judge, for their youth. This requires a keen understanding of the responsibility, impact and sensitivity of the role. Potential volunteers begin their journey by attending an Information Session to learn about CASA, followed by an interview, and then a 32-hour training program. The training is a hybrid format which features independent study using an online learning platform, live Zoom sessions, along with an in-person daylong session at CASA’s offices.
Once training is completed and they are sworn in, volunteers are matched with an Advocate Supervisor and then with their youth. Throughout their CASA journey, volunteers receive constant supervision and support from their supervisor. Advocate Supervisors answer questions and accompany advocates to court hearings which occur about every six months. Monthly trainings, typically led or facilitated by experts in the field, are also made available to advocates on topics like financial literacy, suicide prevention, LGBTQ issues and substance abuse.
Tara Dempster is the Family Finding Manager for Court Appointed Special Advocates of Orange County (CASA OC) but she began her time with CASA as a volunteer advocate. Tara still remembers the impact of her CASA training more than seven years ago. One of the most powerful exercises was a simulation of the Game of LIFE. She recalls, “We were all in groups and given different scenarios. I was a single mom with 2-3 children, we were given a budget and told we had to find somewhere to live. We searched throughout all of Orange County and couldn’t find anything we could afford. So the way our group solved it was by buddying up and renting a small two bedroom place where we had to move 8-9 people in to live together. We were all just completely dumbfounded. We were already in the negative and what happens if our child needs a pair of shoes? Or money to go on a school field trip? What if you have to go to the doctor and get a prescription? It was really informing to think about poverty in our county and the struggles of some of the families we work with at CASA.”
There are currently more than 200 children, teens and young adults on CASA’s Waitlist hoping to be matched with a CASA volunteer. To learn more about becoming a CASA, you are invited to attend a CASA Information Session. To find out more about becoming a Family Finding advocate, click here.