Fairfax Court Appointed Special Advocates

Fairfax casa provides a single-focused service at the request of the Fairfax county juvenile and domestic relations district Court. Operating under an agreement with the Court, Fairfax casa continuously recruits, screens, comprehensively trains, and professionally supervises citizen volunteers from the community to serve as Court Appointed Special Advocates (casa volunteers) for all children residing in the county whose families are cited for abuse and neglect. The role of a casa volunteer is defined in the code of Virginia. Casa volunteers do not make a determination of abuse and neglect, but are empowered by a Court order to (1) conduct an independent investigation of each case; (2) monitor each case for court-ordered services; (3) write and submit a written report to the juvenile judge hearing the case, along with a recommendation as to the child's best interest; and, (4) assist the legal representative, a guardian ad litem, for each case. In short, the organization seeks to ensure that each child's needs are identified and addressed, with the goal of living in a safe and permanent home. Through this service to the Court, the involvement of a casa volunteer in the lives of abused or neglected children provides significant intervention during a period of intense crisis for the children and their families and has been shown to also be preventive by significantly reducing the recidivism of children back into the Court system following initial case closure and also reducing future risk of juvenile delinquency along with the risk of repeating the cycle of abuse as an adult.in pursuit of this single focused objective, Fairfax casa undergirds its program with strong governance and is dedicated to maintaining a highly professional staff to carry out its court-mandated duties. A core activity of Fairfax casa is the recruitment of well qualified and thoroughly screened volunteers to fulfill the organization's programmatic objective. 33 highly qualified volunteers were sworn into service during fy24. Programmatically, fy24 was a very successful year for Fairfax casa as it was able to serve 395 children with the dedicated advocacy of 167 volunteers, the most children served in more than a decade. Cases closed for 190 children who were reunited with their family or were adopted. Casa volunteers submitted 285 objective reports to the Court, which included more than 1,942 best interest recommendations for children; judges accepted and ordered 92% of those recommendations. Casa volunteers made 4,934 in person visits to children, 3,156 phone/text/email contacts, and had 35,452 contacts with service providers, donated 22,981 hours of their time to their cases and traveled more than 141,892 miles in furtherance of their advocacy duties. In addition to requiring 35 hours of pre-service training, casa volunteers are required by the code to complete 12 hours of continuing education/in-service training annually. To meet this requirement, Fairfax casa offered 28 in-house trainings and provided information for 52 commnunity trainings during the year. Volunteers completed a total of 3,095 hours of training, including 349 hours of independent, approved study.