The CASA Trail
I’ve been a CASA for several years now. I have attempted, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to recruit others to this cause. Of those that I have successfully recruited some have come to the decision out of a sense of obligation to help children in need. Others have expressed a sense of needing to give something back to society to in a sense give thanks for the blessings of their lives. I wish that my own story were so noble.
Page Hall, executive director of CASA of the Coastal Bend, may or may not realize that she brought me to CASA emotionally kicking and screaming the whole way. I had known of the organization and its work for several years. I first learned of CASA when Page and a CASA volunter addressed a civic organization at a luncheon one day. I found out that CASA had just purchased a building. Since I am a real estate inspector, I offered to inspect the building and make repair and improvement suggestions. I casually mentioned the new building to members of my church and the social concerns committee offered to spruce up the landscaping. Feeling particularly pleased with my contribution, I promptly filed CASA in my “that’s for someone else’s file” and went on with my life.
You see, I’m the adoptive parent of an abused child. CASA had to be for someone else. My opinion was that all abused and neglected children should be removed from the home and the parents summarily executed. I wasn’t interested in reuniting the families. Though I wasn’t going to interfere with misguided souls who were of the opinion that sometimes the best interest of the child might be reunification, I certainly wasn’t going to help make it happen.
About two years passed. I had seen Page occasionally during that period. Once was for my business. A few times were social events at mutual, but exclusive friend’s gatherings. She never pushed for me to become a volunteer, but she asked me each time she saw me. And each time, I had a reason why I couldn’t. Then, at another luncheon several years later she addressed me personally in front of my peers. I agreed to apply.
I still felt reasonably certain that I would not be accepted. Though my police record was clean and I certainly had no skeletons in the closet that would effect my eligibility, I felt confident that my attitude during the interview would nix the possibility of being selected.
During the interview, I related the story of Meg’s adoption, of the horrors a child of 10 had been forced to endure simply because the persons who she had every right to depend upon for safety had sold her childhood for drugs and alcohol. I related the difficulties of removing misdiagnoses of mental retardation from her permanent record, as well as the struggles to help her get main-streamed into regular school life after years of being shuttled into classes far below her capabilities.
I talked openly about the anger I still feel when I think of the sociopaths (plural, not singular) who could sexually abuse a seven-year-old with the full knowledge of her guardians.
I raged about the inadequacy of the social services system and court system that repeatedly returned her to that environment, even after she had once been removed after being found, at age 5, caring for her infant brother.
And finally, I expressed my anger at two people, stupid enough to choose anything, much less drugs and booze, over five beautiful, innocent children. My daughter was still struggling to cope with having been separated from her siblings.
Much to my surprise the interviewer was nonplussed and even enthusiastic. Apparently, CASA looks for real people, not perfect people. Imagine my embarrassment.
The training somewhat softened my viewpoint regarding summary execution of inadequate parents. During training, I learned far more about myself than I had expected. I’m still vehemently averse to what I have come to believe is the general attitude: children are the property of parents. And I still believe that parents need to internalize that they have parental responsibilities, not parental rights; even though laws sometimes reinforce the opposite. But I have come to understand that all children have an unexplained loyalty and longing for their biological parents that cannot be broken irrespective of the actions taken against them by those parents.
The training exposed me to the complexities of the system that I thought I knew so well from my own daughter’s experience, and later my own experience. The complexities appear far different when one is exposed to all sides of the dilemma.
The child is traumatized. The parent or guardian is frequently unable to cope with even slight frustrations or interruptions of daily routine. In many cases, removal of the child occurs for reasons that resulted from parents who are simply modeling the behavior of generations before them.
Social workers attempt to cope with ever larger work loads and reduced budgets knowing of the potential media frenzy that will occur if mistakes are made.
Service plans are made that sometimes require parents with no means of transportation to travel frequently in order to comply.
Accommodations of all sorts need be made based upon a child’s needs: housing, food, medication, medical and dental needs, psychological counseling, school and tutoring.
Deadlines are set to find permanent placement for the child so that he or she won’t linger in purgatory until he ages out of the system.
The complexity is so great that the child must be depersonalized within the system in order to try to achieve what is best for him as a person. The dichotomy is depressing.
The CASA volunteer has the opportunity to help the child understand at all times that someone cares about them, as a person. The child comes to understand that for all the changing circumstances and people in their lives, the CASA will be the constant. This is not to say that all of the other parties in the child’s life aren’t doing the best job they can. It’s just that the CASA’s job is specifically to care about JUST the child or children in his or her one case.
My first assignment challenged my new found beliefs concerning the “whole picture”. I was given siblings, who were neglected, just like my Meg. They were a boy aged 7 and his sister, age 6. They were unsupervised the first time I saw them. She sat on the steps of the converted motel. He was inside the apartment watching TV. No adult was to be found. The grandmother was given temporary custody when the mother had been sent to jail. Neither child knew where “grandmother” was that night.
They were overly friendly to this stranger who just showed up, but knew their names. They told me that they were being watched by “that kid down there.” They didn’t know his name. He was 11 and was playing with other children, out of site of my two kids.
The kids told me that grandma had gone to collect money owed to them and would be back soon. “Soon” turned into several hours.
Within a week temporary custody was removed from the grandmother for incidences unrelated to having left the children alone. She had tested dirty for cocaine, again. It had also been discovered that she had been allowing her 15-year-old unlicensed son to drive my kids around. My kids were not attending school regularly. Finally, the six-year-old accused the grandmother of physical abuse for shoving her. Both were removed from that environment and entered foster care with only the clothes on their backs.
My boy had learning difficulties and was spending his second year in the first grade. Eventually, he would spend a third year, as an 8-year-old, in first grade. My girl already had a psychological history and had undergone the first of several needed surgeries to correct a cleft pallet and lip. Both were bed wetters and neither had any knowledge of personal hygiene.
My girl had “disruptive episodes” in foster care that were manifested by attempted self-mutilation and complete shut downs where she would withdraw and scream while writhing on the floor. These would occur whenever anyone would try to establish routine behaviors, such as setting a bedtime schedule or bathing. At six years old, she was already becoming “system wise”. She accused the foster parent of grabbing her and both children were again uprooted and sent to a second home.
The second home turned out to be a location where they had been assigned once before, at a prior removal and before CASA was aware of the case. This home was in a rural setting and both children initially seemed to adjust better.
From the beginning I felt that the best hope of helping to determine what was best for my kids’ future was to understand their pasts. So I contacted every school they had attended. I talked with counselors, principals, and teachers. I reviewed their complete medical histories and as much of the histories of the “care givers” in the family as I could obtain. I visited doctors and psychologists. Police records and social service activities were studied. I searched for other family members that might be able to help. None of it was good.
Neither father was in the picture and their whereabouts were unknown.
The grandmother blamed me for the final removal and would not visit the children during supervised CPS visitation if I was present. I could not witness the children’s interaction with her.
Eventually, I had to express my opinion to my CASA supervisor.
My opinion was that the best interest of these children was the termination of parental rights and to recommend against restoring TMC to the grandmother so that the children could be placed in an adoptive environment before they became too old. Two late pieces of information helped me to understand that it wasn’t my preconceived ideas about parental responsibilities that were driving my position. First, neither child (now 8 and 7 years old) knew the date of their own birthday. Second, both opened up to me that they had been taken to drug buys with the grandmother and sometimes became ill when she and friends would smoke crack while everyone watched TV. I had come to believe after a year on the case that no safe environment could ever be established with their family of origin. Unfortunately, statistics bear out an ugly side of our society. Children lose their appeal as potential adoptees at a relatively young age.
I received an unexpected source of support for that position, the mother. She had been released from jail shortly before the termination hearing and showed up at court. Her appeal to me and my supervisor was that she loved her children, but recognized that they could not wait for her to clean up her act. She wanted us to be sure that her mother, their grandmother, did not have the opportunity to screw up their lives as she had her own daughter’s.
Termination was granted by the court. Frankly, by the time termination was granted, I had every expectation that it would be. What I had not anticipated was how absolutely empty and fearful I felt once it was granted. Would my kids be adopted or would they linger in the system until they aged out? If the latter happened, I would perceive it to be largely my fault.
My children’s story has a happy ending. CPS has a relatively new fast track program. Two potential families rose to the surface within a few months. One opportunity was lost when the responsibilities of background checks took too long and one couple responded to other children ready for adoption from a different state. That couple had been my first choice because of the potential parents’ careers. One was a psychologist. The other was a teacher.
But as often happens in life, what is given is more suited than what is wanted. A first meeting was planned to occur at dinner at the foster parent’s house. When I met the potential new parents I knew they were perfect. They needed these kids as much as the kids needed them. I can give no more specific details than that they had lost several children three years earlier in a terrible accident. They were young, and honestly, more beautiful than I am used to ordinary people being. As we ate together, I watched as the four of them interacted.
I had expected my kids to be apprehensive and challenging. Or I pictured them to be overly polite and ingratiating to impress. I had expected the potential parents to be on guard, tentative, over-indulging. I was wrong on every count. They were simply two parents and two children ready to be loved together.
A month later, I was privileged to be present as the CPS worker from Texas boarded the plane with my kids on the way to their permanent home in a nearby state.
