Child and Family Advocates of Cuyahoga County

Cfacc approaches Child welfare and best interests advocacy in a unique way, providing court appointed special advocate volunteers (casas) who are assigned as partners to advocate for the best interests of cleveland-area children, whether one Child or a sibling group. Casa volunteers investigate, monitor, and seek to preserve the welfare of children and vulnerable foster youth, making service referral, placement and permanency recommendations to the local juvenile court. Each casa volunteer brings different skills and perspectives to their role; however, each has one common goal - providing the highest quality advocacy for the best interests of each Child. 2023 accomplishments include: - cfacc adminsiters the Cuyahoga County casa program, overseeing the child-advocacy work of 79 active casa volunteers who served 154 children and youth in foster care in 2023. - cleveland casa volunteers recorded 3547 Child advocacy volunteer hours during 2023, an almost 30% increase over the prior year. - cfacc crossed the important threshold of more than 800 unique children served, since our inception in 2016. - cfacc offered three casa pre-service training events in 20232, to prepare 21 new casa volunteers for service with local foster-system involved youth. - cfacc provided 38 children with holiday gifts;cfacc distributed over 1000 books to young readers in 2023. - cfacc offered 13 continuing education (ce) workshops on Child welfare topics, open to the community as well as active casa volunteers.