and welcome to the personal touch of peter's township my name is tony sill koski and i'm the host for the show the personal touch in peter's township is a show about how many of our wonderful residents are reaching out to help others both within our community and outside of it many of us are so blessed and we're so fortunate to have the time the talents and the means to provide a helping hand to others who find themselves in difficult situations today show is going to highlight one special way in which a variety of peters township people are volunteering to advocate for young adults and children who have no one who can do so in our court system did you know that more than seven hundred thousand children experience abuse or neglect every year in this country instead of playing with neighbors and making happy family memories there attending court hearings adjusting to new foster homes and transitioning to new schools that's a heavy burden for a child to carry here are some other additional statistics two hundred fifty thousand three hundred twenty three children in the united states had the assistance of a specially trained volunteer to speak up for their best interest in the court system last year seventy six thousand seven hundred fifty six volunteers work every day to give these kids a chance four hundred fifty two thousand children across the nation are in need of these special services and washington county is a part of those numbers in fact currently fifteen children in our area are on a waiting list hoping someone is getting trained to help them that's addition  addition to the ninety seven children already being served with a court appointed special advocate or casa or guardian ad libitum gal volunteer dedicated to their case america's most vulnerable children will have someone speaking up for their best interests with your support more children will have the opportunity to thrive in a safe and loving home so it's my pleasure to introduce to you in this segment of the personal touch ski who is the executive director of casa for kids of washington county pennsylvania welcome viv thank you great to have you here and i'm excited so that we can learn more about casa here in washing county and our viewers can become more involved in this organization will be posting the web site for cost up there so they have one to get more information they can do that but our purpose today is to actually visit with vivian so she can help all of us learn more about this great cause an organization so why don't we start out like this i'd like you to share with us a brief description of casa from the nationals all the way down to your local level soup like tony was saying on national cost that is the over view program that sees all the programs in the united states from national we get support with training we  get help with advertising so there's a national cost a program and then there are state programs in pennsylvania there is a ph d program and then there's the local level local programs are run independently were non profit organizations in the state of pennsylvania there are twenty two local programs but nationally there are over nine hundred fifty asa programs and they're in every state which is a really really unique network  the national level helps to boost things on a legislative level as well as build awareness of casa so our program in washington carr county was started in two thousand and two so it's a fairly recent program this yes it is and it was started by a group of people in a judge judge emory who was concerned about children falling through the cracks there actually was a death in washington county of a child and the  judge felt we need to have more people involved in these children's lives and she heard about casa started the program in brought the committee into washington county and we started the program  the state involved in helping you to get this off the ground so they knew casa helps to establish casa programs in different counties but we run as an individual nonprofit a five a one c three ok so now we what is the focus then the main purpose of the casa organization i think the simplest way to explain it is to get children in a forever home many of our kids are in pretty horrendous situations with abuse and neglect sometimes those issues can be corrected in the biological home in the children return and the case closes sometimes the children are in foster care and then it's a matter of moving forward to find that foster care forever home and have those children adopted but that's the goal so that the child ends up in a home that forever supports them and so they have these advocates come in to help these children is there an age group for these children you know like what what part of childhood get served in a or even as it were in the who are age birth to you can be in the system in the court dependency system till twenty one so we have that were a range of children but predominantly our kids are really around five and younger and then elementary school we do have some adolescence and we have one or two children that are eighteen and nineteen but our big focus is on really helping them at that elementary school age the cases that come to us are assigned by the judge and quite frankly we get some of the most egregious cases and the cases that he's most concerned about the judge or the master is most concerned about having that extra set of eyes and ears and help for that child which one of the judges currently in washington county works with casa right now judge michael lucas is the dependency judge and we have a hearing master that also hears these dependency cases and again this is dependency not to the in quincy our children through no fault of their own who the circumstances of their birth and what's happening in their families to environmental issue absolutely it's happened to them so two thousand and two we kind of roll back where did you come into the picture all those how did you get involved in casa interestingly enough i began as a volunteer and i was in the actually the second class of the volunteer training and so that was two thousand and thirteen  i saw right away how effective this was in court with my first case and again acosta has training you don't go into this on your own you have training and you have support so after my first case unfortunately the executive director who was there at the time was i had to leave for her personal reasons so it was like the ball was going to  and i was anxious about that i approached the board with some other people that i became friends with through training and i said we would run it for a month and till they had at least a window of time to do a search and find a new executive director well the month half and they asked me if i would take the take the job and i did what an honor so it was an honor i felt very odd right so here we are you know almost thirteen years later and i've been the executive director of a so we now have a staff of of three of us which is we're small but mighty we have three staff but we have forty one advocates that we all monitor and watch and actually our numbers since we spoke or have increased we now have one hundred eleven kids that were having we still sadly have that wait list  that we need volunteers to take those children off our wait list our training class is going to begin in february the end of february and it goes for five weeks there's all kinds of information on our website about our training and how to become an advocate so how how do people prior to the show hear about coffee where do you get information how do you know about this it really is our that's one of us our biggest struggles because people don't know what casa is what does that mean casa well it stands for court appointed special advocates and we try to get articles in the paper we try to do awareness campaigns but were a budget is very small we don't have the monies for that so you know we really hope that people go and look on our website and learn more about us word of mouth word of mouth is another strong one and it's interesting because a lot of times when you become a cost advocate you talk to your friends and you talk to your church and we we get volunteers by word of mouth because of the impact the work does for children do you ever on your own as the director go out to local organizations and speak about costs or have you presented about their absolutely in fact i welcome if anyone's interested or needs a speaker rotary club or a group or a church you know to please contact us  your information is going to be on the show to contact us and i will go out and speak about what we do and what we what our needs are ok so let's go through the process of the volunteer i'm interested  in knowing more about it so what is my next step in that process well the next step is to contact us and there's an application process you would fill out and it gives a little bit of you write something about your background in and working with kids for right so we do those clearances and then begin the training the training encompasses thirty hours of training and again that's on a national level that training information is given but we tweak it to fit our county because some of the nuances in court is a little bit different county by county so they go through the thirty hours of training as well as six hours of court observation and so that they really can see what happens to children in court and and we have them observe court that has cost us on it so they observe the whole hacked of that costs on the record process so they really get an understanding of that upon completion of all that they're then sworn in by judge lucas casa volunteers in the state of pennsylvania there's a statute that gives them standing in the court that means that they can speak in court on behalf of that child there's already official then it's it's very it's very impactful and it's also very powerful because of that standing and the court order  you are allowed to have every piece of information about their child medical mental health foster care school everything and the reason that's so important is because that costs the advocate does all the research on what's happened to that child including all the children and youth services viles they do a complete record  and with that information they write a court report and this is where the impact of their voice their child's voice through their court report becomes so important the casa report has of course all the demographic information and the history and the timeline of the child but it also has a section that is the child's wishes and a lot of times our children will say exactly what their wishes casa may not agree with it but it's a way it's a vehicle for the child to have their voice heard in court and that's the cost of volunteer who interviews the child yes because that's part of the requirement that you see the child frequently that you get to know them that you understand their circumstances and their needs what's working well where they need more support and also in their casa report is a recommendations for the court and those recommendations may be the range of it can be we are going to return we we recommend returning the child home only recommend adoption or it can be as simple as the child needs new glasses and hasn't had them and that they need mentors we are advocates and it's a little bit different we are not allowed to transport the children or engage in that kind of friendship relationship and sometimes our crosses will tell their child i'm going to recommend something that maybe you're not happy with or but i know this is in your best interest ok and so those kinds of things are established very early in the casa and child relationship and that's done through t training and also the close supervision the interesting thing about casa reports is i have sat in court and i have seen judge lucas go through the casa report and when he gets to the recommendations many of those recommendations go directly into the court order and so that is impactful and in powerful in terms of advocating for that child so you really have to do a complete job absolute so we're going to take a brief break and what we'll do was will come back and we're going to find out a little bit more about how we can all get involved in helping  we're finding out how adults can advocate for kids within our court system today and vivian's already touched a little bit on the whole process of becoming a volunteer but who are these volunteers like do they have to be social workers are they only from peter's township you know actually a bit more about we have we have volunteers that are from from the washing county but also from allegheny county you must be twenty one years old but you don't have to have a social work background in fact we have people of all kinds of levels of education we have we have attorneys that are retired teachers we have people that have just work with kids in soccer and clubs like that and really have a heart for kids so there isn't you know you don't have to have a social worker to agree to be a class advocate you have to care about kids and i can attest to that because my cousin i think i told you was in austin he retired recently from a company and he was in the h r department and he went out became trained and he's a casa volunteer in texas so yes and he loves it yeah and he could attest to that and so that's really neat to hear that you can be from any kind of background and can help out and do get people from peter sonship we do we have here we have a number of people from peter's township and there's not only the volunteer work that you can do but we also are welcome welcoming to people that want to help just on one a vent or want to maybe learn about us and become a board member so there's all kinds of different ways even just letting me know that your church wants a speaker helps us because like i said earlier we don't have the funding for advertising so it is a lot by word of mouth so you must have some fund raising though i imagine you do have office expenses and other types of so could you share with us does the money go but for staff obviously is probably the result of it but also what do you do to fundraising well we have a lot of different ways of fund raising i do write grants we get a small amount of funding from the from the county  and we have a lot of individuals that don't need to us and corporations our biggest fund raising event is our chefs for casa event which will be held this april twenty seventh that's a friday i believe i hope i have the date right and so that's our big fund raising event and it's a dinner held that bellisario we have chefs that go means a place very very nice of that event this year we're trying something new it's called showcase of playhouses and is not a fund raising event as much as an awareness of casa and child abuse and neglect and what you can do to make a difference we've got some wonderful builders on hand that are going to build play houses that we will be giving away with a raffle ticket raffle purchase of a nominal fee and messiah the school construction is one of the buildings we're going to be giving these a showcase of play houses away in april at the very end of the month that sunday i believe it's april thirtieth and at that giveaway day at washington crown center we're going to have providers that people can learn about all different kinds of ways to help children in in our county they'll be domestic violence people there there will be other types of providers and of course of course casa and where will these homes be on display they will go beyond display the whole last winners are chosen the builders will be delivering it to the child's house and where will they be on display at washington crown center you know essentially ok yes all right on the macy's end of the mall that is all wonderful and so this is going to of course be open all of also through the playhouse yes you have coming up and all of our information is on our website to double check our training we have talked about begins at the end of at the end of february and then we also be having training again in the fall we train twice a year and that's thirty hours you said thirty and where does the training take place for we volunteers we train a gander mountain there is a community room that they're kind enough to give us for training that's t v show here so that you all at home can see that and write that down and how about looking at just costs as a whole it was the executive director what role in all of this do you actually still fulfill the role of an advocate when in the court part it's interesting because part of national casa asked asked for everyone on staff to advocate for a child so i also have two children that i advocate for and of course i oversee the program and and oversee supervise some volunteers as well so i guess my goal would would be for our program to have so many volunteers that we can assign a child every time that they are a they come into the court system and right now our numbers meaning the children there judy k they are the highest they've ever been there's over four hundred children in washington county they have been abused and neglected and are active with the chords and there's a lot of reasons for that one of the the problems in our county were experiencing drug upsurge and so it's affecting families and their capacity to take care of children so we're having more and more children go into care and it's it really is a crisis we need volunteers to help advocate for these children hopefully we're touching the hearts of some people who are watching so that maybe if you don't want to do it yourself you may be willing to give time to other areas and causes of casa or perhaps you know people who would like to be able to do that as well so if we want to  look at casa and see where it's going in the future do you have a future vision for the organization as a whole that you would like to see you know obviously we want to grow we want to grow in capacity to supervise volunteers and advocate for children and since i've been a director we have steadily grown each year last year we advocated for a hundred and fifty four children one hundred fifty four children in two thousand sixteen and that has grown each year so you know we've got more volunteer a graduation i am so pleased that you were here today and to be able to spend some time with you i'm most fortunate to have you pass through my life as well as your children and i congratulate you on a job well done thank you here with casa and i hope all of you who are watching today got a different perspective on what casa is in what it does and how perhaps you and your organization can help out so it's incredible the number of people in peter's township who are involved in this in ways that we don't even know in reaching out and helping others and that there are people like you in the volunteers at casa who are willing to stand up and advocate for these poor youngsters who are being abused  that it's hard to hear about it so hard to swallow into understand and take all that in and so we're thankful for people like you who are willing to donate your time and effort and resources to helping them  a personal touch does exist here and peters township and many of us are blessed and we're fortunate to have the time talents in the means to provide a helping hand and we hope that you will consider casa as one of those areas that maybe you could donate your time i want to think ryan bond i am kelsey sylvester robin hodge and frick and all the students here at the peters township high school media program who have taken their time and energy to help us put this program together thank you so much for viewing our show and if you or your business organization would like to become involved with the casa for kids program please contact visit in vivian the south ski the program coordinator thank you for viewing our show and remember that you too can reach out and give a personal touch to somebody in peter's township our local area or surrounding me it's all about