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I am very disturbed to hear this kind of talk about volunteers. I am currently a CASA volunteer, I went through my orientation and training fall of 2009. I am very impressed currently and have been with the training I have recieved through CASA. Not only, was their training very in depth beyond just cultural sensitivity but stressed that biases and cultural differences need to be looked at addressed and to make sure that we understand what the parents must be going through. Our training emphasized over and over that many of the parents do face some horrific barracades to completing services and to keep that in mind. And to check your judgements at the door.

As a mother it is a hard line to work with kids and their families and have to readjust my expectations to what is best for the child! The other strong message throughout the CASA training and supervision is that biological families and reutrn to parent is always where one must strive for. I think Mr. Wexler is not taking into account that CASA's are not there in the beginning unfortunetly to help the parents and children. The kids that are referred to CASA are already in the foster system and try and exhaust all possibilities to reunify to parents. Why attack volunteers it seems as though we are being blamed for taking children out of homes. I think before going on the air to disregard or belittle the work of CASA.

With all of the bad programs out there CASA is not one of them!

posted 3 years, 2 months ago
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