Success Stories

Hope
(Excerpted from "Someone There for Me: Everyday Heroes Through the Eyes of Teens in Foster Care")

The police arrived to take me away from my family when I was 7 years old. Foster homes came and went. Schools were here and there. Caseworkers drifted in and out of my life. I had just moved from an awful six-year placement with alcoholics when the court appointed me a CASA volunteer, Pat.

That summer...the judge sent me home...I entered my mother’s apartment and went straight to my room. There was a bed with no blankets, a closet overflowing with trash, and a dresser against one wall. The carpet was littered with cigarette ashes and the entire apartment reeked of smoke, waste, and mildew. I lay down on the mattress and cried.

Pat came to see me quite often and called me when she couldn’t come in person. She worked with my lawyer to appeal the court’s decision...She told me things can only get better, and that I just needed to hang in there ‘til they do...I moved into my eighth home and since then life has been amazing.

I never had someone stand up for me like she did. She stood before the judge, the lawyers, my mother, and caseworkers and wasn’t swayed by their opinions. It completely amazed me. I trusted her more with every visit and every call and found myself enjoying her check-ups and questioning. She became not only an advocate, but a friend I could truly count on.

I have testified to a legislative committee on behalf of the CASA program. At the end of the testimony I said: "To give a child a CASA is to give them a voice. To give them a voice is to give them hope, and to give them hope is to give them the world." I believe that with all my heart.

By Pamela Butler, Oregon teen

"A Super Hero Without a Cape"

I became a CASA because I wanted to make a difference in a child's life. I had heard the stories of how one CASA or another had stepped into the chaos surrounding a child in the court system and literally pulled them to safety. I could actually see the cape and tights they must have worn as they swooped down from their ordinary lives to fight lawyers, foster parents, and caseworkers all in the name of their child. So I too gallantly signed up, was interviewed, trained and handed my first case. I was so excited -- a little boy and girl would have a better life because of me.

I met regularly with my kids and delighted in getting to know them. The months went by, and one by one a little girl lost people she dearly loved -- she was removed from her parents' home, her grandmother was court ordered to have no contact with her, her brother moved to another state, and finally she was moved out of her foster home and away from the woman she considered a grandmother.

I began to question how much difference I was truly making in her life. Her lawyer, current caseworker and I were in agreement on the outcome of the case, and they were doing a good job in working toward that end. I had tried, and hadn't been able to keep her in the foster home that I felt was best for her and she was clearly suffering from feelings of abandonment. As I drove to visit her at her new foster home I felt very discouraged and was wondering if my role was really necessary to the case. I knocked on the door and waited. When that little girl saw me standing there she looked startled for a moment and then with all the exuberance of a four year old she threw open her arms and crowed triumphantly, "My Joanna, you found me!"

I had started out wanting to make a difference in a child's life. I thought that meant performing heroic acts and fighting epic battles, the kind of stuff you need a cape and tights for. Instead, I did it just by showing up on a little girl's doorstep. She had been lost and now felt found, and for her that made all the difference. And I did it in jeans and a t-shirt!

By Joanna Engle, Kidsports