On Being a CASA.
Why it's Harder than Being a Foster Parent. And That's Saying Something.
The Desire to Bail.
Last week, I was ready to resign from my volunteer position as a CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocate for children).
I was ready to leave the hellscape of child welfare behind and never go back to it again. I thought we had done the hardest bits of the child welfare system - David and I had already been foster parents. People are always talking about how hard fostering is, right? We had a bunch of kids in our home who all, gratefully, were able to go back to their families. Our youngest kids, Raffi (13) and Desi (9) came to us as foster kids and then ended up staying. We formally adopted them and closed our license when we ran out of bedrooms.
But last week was a rough one. David was in Portland with his new show, Killer Burlesque, on its out-of-town try-out, and he had to talk me through every rant, every rough decision, every impossible-to-fix problem. I hadn’t realized that my postion as a CASA would be accepting and sitting by impotently as kids fall through cracks and into oblivion. Thats what the job felt like.
Fostercare comes with challenges, but it’s contained. It happens within an already-created family, that can expand, contract and problem solve as needed. Thre are family rules and guidelines and guard rails. The mission is clear: provide stability, trust, connection, support, patience, expertise in parenting kids with PTSD and trauma, and lastly, provide food, physical and spritual things they need, enrichment opportunites. Mostly, love, in whatever forms love can take.
Being a CASA is different because you can observe a situation for a child and might be able to step in and do something, but also you might have absolutely no ability to change their lives or make their situation better. In which case, you sit there and watch the wreck happen. Being a CASA sometimes feels like being a witness to a car wreck and watching people struggle and then having someone whisper in your ear, “Well this is the job, it’s heartbreaking. People get in car accidents.”
Why would anyone sign up for this?
I made exit plans in my head.
CASA Basics
CASA is a volunteer position. No financial compensation. This proves to be important because lots of kids in the foster system, especially the kids who have been in it for any length of time, have this experience where every adult in their lives is paid to be with them. So it matters that CASA’s aren’t paid. And it also means the kids can be in your life forever, potentially. The case may close offcially, but the relationship can be real and valuable social capital for the family going forward, and in many instances the relationships outlast the case.
CASAs have to get to know the kids so they can advocate for them in court. I babysat for my kid’s foster family, got them off to school when the foster mom had to work, brought groceries to their home, David and I took all the kids on picnics to Mt. Charleston, the littlest ones came to my daughter’s birthday party. They have eaten our dinners and swam in our pool. This is where the grey is. You are creating a bond of trust and loyalty with vulnerable children, while also being a mandated reporter, and while working within the rules of a system that has lots of holes and trap doors and limitations, and excessively busy and over-worked professionals.
This is, they tell us, a professional relationship. But it certainly doesn’t feel like one to me. It feels devoutly personal.
Tender: Having a relationship with Kids Who Have Been Through Hell
And so things get thorny when the foster-kinship mom that is housing 4 of the 5 siblings tells the 16 year-old girl, after an argument, that she wants to take her to counseling, but instead she lies to her, gets her in the car and drives her back to the institution she got her from. Total betrayal. Total mishandling of a girl who was on the frayed edges of trust with the people in her life anyway. And so the girl runs.
I now have two runaways on the streets of Vegas.
But I find them. And the 17-year-old boy has a moment of rage, that softens like butter under a broiler, and turns to tears and weeping for his own sadness. And in the midst of those tears, he tells me he has never been parented, really, and he has done his little sisters hair, and gotten her off to school, and made sure his siblings had food, and that he loves his mama and his daddy, but no one is there for him, no one sees him, no one can push him out of the rut he is in. He cannot even see past tomorrow, let alone what his future could be.
This is why he hits things. Why he has been in juvie. Behavior schools. Got suspended. Found the bad boys. Held a gun. Wanted to gang bang but then thought better of it. I can’t help, but see him as a four-year-old standing there, wet cheeks, not having a clue what to do next. A little, sad boy in a body that will be a man next year and no one will care that his life has been unfair.
This family is full of love as much as it is full of mental illness and poverty and generational legacies of trauma and hardship. In these instances, I wonder - could we fix the family enough, instead of separating them? Is it possible?
I have McArthur Genius Grant Fellow Dorothy Roberts’ book, Torn Apart, on my mind. She writes about Black families, like this one, separated by the system. She connects the ease with which we pull Black kids from families, and connects it to enslavement through post-emancipation apprenticeship programs.
Whereas the forced supervision and disolution of Black families at the hands of white people is rooted in slavery, the systematic court ordered displacement of free Black children to stranger’s homes finds its orgins in apprenticeships…These laws gave judges unfettered discretion to place Black children in the care and service of white people if they found the parents to be unfit, unmarried, or unemployed…
The book goes on from there, outlining the forced separation of immigrant families, Black and Native families through governmental systems. In other words, it was easy to come up with reasons to pull Black children from their families as a way to undermine communities of color in the pursuit of white supremacy. Although the labor part no longer applies, we know that Black families experience more family policing because they sit at the “intersection of structural racism and poverty.” I should probably do an essay about her book because it is infuritating and powerful.
When I think about my CASA kids, I think of their parents, who lack mental health support and have legacies of hardship in their histories. I see them in poverty. I see them struggle. It’s not ideal. But they also aren’t bad people. For instance, liking the son means you have to like the dad, because they have the same affability, the same natural communication skills, the same charisma and personality. Couldn’t these positives be enhanced and enriched so that the family could be made safe? Or am I just hoping? And what is the point of removing children from homes that aren’t that bad and allowing them to live in places that arent that good?
Roberts wonders why the main service these families are being offered is “the forced breakup of their families?” She isn’t wrong. It is complicated.
Our House
So the teens come to our house. Because runways have to run away to some place. And I know this is trouble because it breaches all kinds of systemic boundaries. But I promise them no cops, no institutions, no caseworkers until we get everything sorted.
We will figure it out, I say. But I have no idea how that will happen.
I call my CASA peer counselor, who calls the supervisor, who calls the supervisor of the case at DFS. We examine our choices.
How do we let them be homeless? How will they be able to submit to rules and procedures to get them housed when the 16-year-old trusts NO adult and the 17-year-old is so anxiety-ridden that sitting on the inside of a booth at Olive Garden makes him so uncomfortable and claustrophic, he panics and has to leave? How will we ever get him into a program where he has to be confined?
I let them be kids, and use the wifi, and play Fortnite, and the 16-year-old and my daughter make bracelets at the kitchen table, while the the boy and Raffi, who is thrilled to have an older dude in the house, eat cheeseburgers and scream at the computer screens. I find the two siblings, as if they were toddlers, curled up together for a nap in one bed in Edie’s old bedroom. They look like babies, and this is what they are, even as the boy has said to me, “Next year, everyone will expect me to be a man, but I am still a kid.”
So I do what comes naturally. I ask David if we can foster them. Just the two oldest. The other siblings have found their way into another foster home. He is right there with me.
We have serious phone conversations about how these kids could do in our house: Could we do it for the long haul? What about our traveling? Our work? How would it impact Raffi and Desi who are doing so well after a lot of struggles to get them there? How would this go? What if it negatively impacted Raffi and Desi, how would we handle that, so as not to cause damage to the other two? And vice versa.
AAAAAGH, so much to consider.
I tell David: I have been hating being a CASA. I was going to stick with this family and never accept another one. I felt so hog tied, so unable to effect change that I simply receded into the background of their lives for a few weeks. Flailing. It all felt like it was in vain. Kids on the run, kids in institutions, placements fighting with them, people focusing on consequences and punishments and not healing. I was merely somebody who could give testimony to their lives and their stories, but not much else.
It felt like masochism - look at this, keep looking, feel how much it sucks, but do nothing to change it. You are impotent and here are 10 reminders of it.
Negotiations
We talk to the kids. Well, I do, with David with me there in spirit. And lay out the options we have considered.
The teens can go to a family member (they have lived there before) that has proven to be safe, but unreliable and frustrating. They say No immediately. They are done with fitting square pegs into round holes.
I offer them the opportunity for them to live with us as “foster kids” but they will have to turn themselves into DFS and we will have to be re-licensed officially. I let them know I won’t be able to be their CASA, if we do this. They immediately say No because they want their siblings to be represented in the system, and by me, because they distrust the very idea of anyone new. They are disenfranchised from the system by the impacts of the system. Their trust is broken. And they love their siblings so much.
But I see that something has shifted in the girl simply by us asking if they want to live with us. She had asked me to adopt her once “if you want me” after a particularly hard time without her mom, and I had told her, You have a mom and dad. But I know that she didn’t want to be adopted, she just wanted her family to be healed. One of those is easier than then other. But this offer of fostering proved that she was wanted by someone. It meant something, it made her lighter, and I am forever glad that we put it on the table.
We talked about it for awhile. The kids decided they would continue to live with a couple friends in the community, a kind of flop house for untethered young adults that has its ups and downs, but is generally safe enough.
The boy tells me what he needs from me and we make a plan: To parent him as a young adult in the commuity, like an auntie of sorts, kind of the way we parent young adults Lucy (19) and Edie (18). To push him to start getting a fast food job, making his own money. He wanted me to nag him to take his pills, nag him about using condoms, provide an occassional place for sanity and food when they need a break, when they need to eat. To remind him to buy diapers for his three-month-old baby, and push him into independence, as we would and do for Lucy and Edie. We got them supplies at Walmart, picked up presecriptions, got phones fixed so he could communicate with potential employers.
Because of a connection through my book - not my CASA work - I stumbled into his counselor at independent living, which no one inside the system bothered to tell me about - and this counselor will now work with him to get ID, his food handlers cards, bus money.
She is saving him. It’s a relief.
We negotiated: I would not treat him like a child, like I wasn’t going to pick him up, when he is a grown man, he needs to take the bus. Or cash-apping him money for fast food. He needed to get a job and buy groceries and learn to cook, something I can obviously help with.
And the support: I’ve texted him multiple times cheering him on since then, so he goes on interviews and checks through his to-do list. I hassled him to call the independent living counselor and she answered him by providing just what he needed.
These kids are still in a hole. There are emergencies and pseudo emergencies and non-emergencies that feel like emergencies. They are back in the community, technically runaways. But they aren’t alone. And now I see what the work of a CASA really is.
It is to insert yourselves in the lives of kids and be that reliable consistent presence, but inserting is the key word. We aren’t monitoring, observing - we are inserting ourselves, sharing our powerful class privileges and social capital. It is so not professional, except when you are wearing a pansuit in court. As a foster parent, the inserting happened because the kids were blended into the work of the family, so working for the child was working for the families involved, too.
This job is a bit about the courtroom and knowing all the players and advocating in their best interests, but we aren’t wildlife photographers who are not allowed to stop filming and save the antelope from the Lion. CASA’s have to insert themselves. To save the antelope whenever possible.
And the challenge, of course, for a new CASA like me, is to figure out the boundaries. And play them to the child’s advantage, when I can.
I’m not about to quit yet. I’m still learning.
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END NOTES:
This coming week I will be doing the Reno Lit Crawl and doing some talks in the rural towns of Nevada. Come say Hi at any of these events:
Thursday, October 10, 9-11am, Healthy Communities Coalition of Lyon and Storey Counties, Silver City, Nevada.
I’m joining a monthly meeting of local, state, federal and tribal groups that are working on food security, access to health care, positive youth development, and building community. And we’ll eat together - I’m making ratatouille!
Friday, October 11, 11-12pm, University of Nevada at Reno, Coffee Hour with University of Nevada.
Reno students and faculty, grab a coffee and let’s talk about systemic poverty issues and its impact on how and what people eat. In the Ansari Business Building (AB) 110, University of Nevada, Reno.
Friday, October 11, 5:30-7:00 pm, Dayton Community Center, Dayton, Nevada.
Join us at 170 Pike Street for home-cooked pozole and good talk about food insecurity and our communties.
Friday, October 12, 2pm, Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl, Great Basin Community Food Co-op
I’ll be doing a panel discussion with Monica Macansantos, author and 2024-25 Black Mountain Institute Shearing Fellow, and Nevada Humanities curator/Program Director, Kathleen Kuo. Come on down to 240 Court Street and let’s put our heads together about the food that nourishes us, separates us, brings us together and tends to our wounds.
Upcoming Book Clubs/ Discussion Groups
If you are military spouse and in Vegas, you can join the Military Spouuse Book Club at Nellis Airforce Base, for a get-together, 11am, Saturday October 26th. They are reading The Meth Lunches and I’ll be there, hanging out to chat.
And shout out to Columbus Food Rescue (above) in Ohio for reading and discussing The Meth Lunches yesterday as a group and asking all the hard questions about feeding people. Thank you for your community work!
Academics
I’m looking forward to a November 4th Meth Lunches discussion with the Nutrition Department at Buffalo State University. And later, a full on lecture there in the new year. Love talking to students and young people and hearing their ideas about making community better.
Thank you, as always, for reading. xo Kim
It's soooo hard. I was a Guardian ad Litem for over 20 years, in Dependency & Neglect cases and Delinquency. I often felt like I was the only person worrying about those adolescents at 3am. These kids are really fortunate to have you on their case, even if it feels like it's taking years off your life.
As a CASA myself in the state of VA I related to this post so much, and have felt very much the same way. Thank you for helping me not feel so alone. I'll keep showing up for these kids, just like so many of my burnt-out social worker and non-profit friends, still wanting to quit every day but knowing it's not something I'll ever do.