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Rose Breitweiser of Child Advocates of El Dorado County described that CASA means: Court Appointed Special Advocate. She listed several aspects of that role that a volunteer would do after being approved by the court: get assigned a child, typically in the foster care system; visit the child 0.5 - 1.0 hours per week; build a caring relationship and report problems; keep it up for 18-24 months per home; be a consistent adult in the child's life; be a fact gatherer from the child's parents, teachers and therapists. Training to be a CASA takes 30 hours total: 15 hours online, and 15 in the classroom. There are 150 CASAs (30 in S. Lake Tahoe, 120 on the Western Slope) in El Dorado County serving 175 kids. You can partner with someone else to serve as a CASA, for example, one person could do the court reporting, and one could hang around with the child. Funding of CASA comes from three roughly equal sources: private donors, government, and fund raisers. |
Membership chairperson, Anne Eckert represented the Club in presenting three members with their Blue Badges. These were all honorary memberships as part of corporate memberships. As part of Guthrie and Ellerman, a Professional Law Corporation, Kim Strand and Jennifer Fung received their blue badges. Jana Ellerman said a few nice words of introduction about both of them. Hal Young, part of Astute Wealth Management, was introduced by his son Ben. We're thrilled to have three new Blue Badge members in the club.
