Taking Your CASA Child to Your Home or Office

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Every month or so, we get a call from one of you who wants to know if you can take your CASA child to your home. You usually have a good reason to want to do this – to practice on the computer, start a gardening project, to have a place to meet that is warm and comfortable – these are all very valid and wonderful ideas. But taking your minor to your home is strictly against the rules.

You signed a Volunteer Agreement at the end of your training in which you promised “to comply with mandates of SFCASA by the National, State, and Local CASA Associations, Judicial Council of California, and Rules of Court.” The last item reads, “I will not take my child to my home or workplace, or introduce him to my family, friends, etc.” At the time, that probably did not seem like a very big deal. You did not know how involved you would get in your case and how convenient it would be to drop by the house “just this once,” or pick up the child while your partner or child or niece was with you “just this once.”

The simple fact is that taking your child to your home or workplace or introducing him or her to friends or family is against the mandate of SFCASA. The San Francisco Dependency Court has defined our rules and roles. Whenever we have asked the judge about exceptions, we have received a very clear answer: No. SFCASA Volunteers cannot bring the children to their homes.

The Reasons

The bottom line about taking your child to your home is that it is against the rules. There are good reasons for the rules. Here are a few:

• Your role is to remain objective as an advocate for the child in court. That is definitional of a CASA. If you involve the child in your life, you lose that objectivity and could be removed from the case.
  
  
• You are supposed to find services for the child in his or her neighborhood, not bring him or her into your life, so that when you leave the case, the child will still receive the extra services and will not feel your absence so acutely.
  
  
• The child may be disturbed by the difference in material possessions in your home and in his or her own home.
  
  
• The child may be jealous of other relationships in your life.
  
  
• You could end up with intrusions from your child or his family if they know where you live or work.
  
  
• You might create a situation of inappropriate intimacy or confusing signals that could result in misunderstandings or even false accusations from the child.

Why Can CASAs in Other Counties Take Their Kids Home

Different courts create different rules for their programs. Each program must follow the mandates of its court. It is a county-based system, so we have to follow the rules established for us by the San Francisco Courts.

Yes, it may be infuriating to learn that a volunteer from Alameda County can take her boys to her home to bake cookies, or to read a newspaper article about a CASA in San Mateo County who takes her own kids to the park with her CASA child.

Their programs allow different kinds of relationships than ours. If you want to re-define your relationship with your child, you can not do so within the constraints of the SFCASA Program.

So What Do You Do With Your Minor on a Rainy Afternoon?

We hope that by creating activities in the neighborhoods where the children live, we will help you have a meaningful contact with your child and develop resources that go beyond the single event.

SFES welcomes CASAs and their children to drop by and use their wonderful facilities at any time. There they have rooms for art, science, and computers as well as quiet classrooms for homework or just reading. Other neighborhoods have similar resource centers. We hope to develop closer relationships with SFES as time goes on.

Museums and libraries are also good places to go on a rainy day. Don’t hesitate to come by to borrow our membership card for the Academy of Sciences. Their displays are a guaranteed hit for a child of any age. The exploratorium is another sure-fire trip.

If you have had a particularly successful outing with your child, please send us an e-mail, fax, letter, or voice mail message so that we can share your ideas with other volunteers via this Newsletter.

What If You Have Already Been Taking Your Child to Your Home?

Every once in a while, one of you will casually mention something that you did with your child that involved stopping by your house. Perhaps this rule was not stressed enough in training – but it is such a serious offense that the judge considers it grounds for termination of a CASA’s role in a case.

If you have already grown so informal and intimate with your child that you are involving him or her in your personal life, it is probable that you should re-define your relationship. Perhaps you are a friend or mentor rather than a CASA. You might find another program, such as the DHS Volunteer Program or Big Brothers/Big Sisters, better suited to your needs, for they are designed to support mentorship relationships without any court advocacy component.

Perhaps the hardest task of all is to stop going to your home once you have started. It is always more difficult to take away something that is expected than to do without things you have never had. So if you are ever tempted to stop by your house with your child, DON’T DO IT!!! Call your case supervisor for creative alternatives. Your child needs you as an advocate. Find other resources for the more personal relationships.