Court Appointed Special Advocates' Training Coordinator, Cindy Maldonado
Our Guest Speaker for September 22, 2022 was Cindy Maldonado from CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates For Children). Cindy has been CASA’s Training Coordinator for 4 years. She is a proud graduate of Sonoma State University in Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies and began her career with CASA as an intern. CASA began in Seattle in 1977 when Judge Soukup felt that there was often insufficient information about children to make life-altering decisions about them. He came up with the idea of bringing in volunteers to learn about the kids, advocate for them, and report about the kids to the court. The community’s response was CASA was overwhelming and now CASA is a national program typically run by the Juvenile Courts.
There are 691,000 children in foster care nationally and 86,599 in California. CASA serves 14,000 of these foster care children in California. Sonoma County’s CASA program was founded by Judge Arnold Rosenfield in 1996. CASA typically has about 150 volunteers serving 160-180 children and sibling groups, although due to Covid-19 the number of caregivers has declined. CASA provides services to children from birth to age 21. CASA’s mission is to serve abused and neglected children coming before the Juvenile Court for protection and rehabilitation services. CASA volunteers are the eyes and ears of the court. They monitor the children’s living situation, serve as friends and a source of support for the children, and give a voice to the children and their concerns. CASA volunteers provide balanced advocacy for the children; they advocate for direct service agencies to provide proper services to the children but do not themselves provide support directly to the children. They regularly meet with CASA supervisors and sometimes go to court to provide judges with reports about the children.
CASA has a specific set of volunteer rules and prohibited activities, all geared towards eliminating conflicts of interest and inappropriate behavior towards the children. CASA currently has a waiting list of 90 children and is actively seeking volunteers. They will have a Fall Training session during the last 2 weeks in October. If you are interested, or know someone who is, RSVP to 707-565-6375 or. tccasa@sonomacasa.org.
Many thanks to Cindy and CASA for the informative and helpful presentation!
Click HERE for Sunrise Rotary presents - CASA with Cindy Maldonado
