9 months into the case and I’m bored. I’m a CASA to a 16-year-old young woman who is currently placed at home with her mother. This is easy, I think. Nothing is happening. The issues at home seem to be under control. I even get along well with her mother. I worry that I’m not making any difference. I was just coasting until dismissal.

Then it’s January. My child starts canceling meetings or simply not showing. Frustrating! I begin losing interest in the case. I thought maybe she too was bored with the process and with me. There’s no real threat of her being removed from her home anyway, so why am I bothering?

When I finally see her again, she walks out of her front door with a very visible baby bump. NO{insert expletives here}! We talked about this! She told me herself months ago that she was too young to have a baby and wanted to enjoy being a teenager. Yet she now stands before me, pregnant, and intent on keeping the baby.

I have a court report to write in a week and no idea what to put in it. This dilemma caught me off guard. Up until this point, I really thought the case should be dismissed. I did not see any serious issues in her current living situation nor with her mother’s ability to care for her. But now she’s pregnant. Does that mean her dependency status should remain? Is that relevant? I’m not a lawyer or a social worker, yet here I was trying to interpret the law. Her lawyer thought her dependency status should remain. Her social worker was adamant that it must remain. Their concerns were valid. What will happen to her and her child if her case is dismissed? Who is going to make sure she does right by her baby? Even though I had the same fears, were those fears relevant to this young woman’s dependency status?

The reality is that teenage girls get pregnant. However, we don’t automatically make them dependents of the court at inception. If she wasn’t pregnant, what changes? Her home situation is stable. The issues her mother is dealing with really have nothing to do with her or her care.

I wrote my report. I recommended her case be dismissed and that her pregnancy should be considered irrelevant to her dependency status. The lawyer read it. The social worker read it. Begrudgingly they agreed I was right. The best we could do is work together to put a plan in place for her and hope she follows it. We slunk into the court and scheduled a summation hearing.

I have no doubt that my report directly changed the course of her future. That fact alone both scares and inspires me.

Do I think she’s equipped to have this baby? Not at all. No 16 year old girl is. But I believe she deserves the same rights to make her own way as any other girl in her situation. My advocacy ensured she got that right. Time will tell how she does.

SF CASA will be highlighting one volunteer each month to honor their achievements and give our volunteers a chance to become more familiar with one another. Some names, places and other identifiables have been changed to maintain confidentiality.

SF CASA will be highlighting one volunteer each month to honor their achievements and give our volunteers a chance to become more familiar with one another.

California CASA will be presenting a Symposium on Mental Health and LGBT Advocacy in the CASA Volunteer Role.

Presenters from Y.O.U.T.H. Training Project will cover how to advocate for youth when it comes to mental health. Hearing from youth trainers will help CASA’s make informed decisions about what kind of services they should be advocating for.

The LGBTQ Cultural Competency component will address the issues of how sexual orientation and gender identity shape our lives. LGBTQ youth are overrepresented in the foster care system. If you are an advocate for a child who identifies as LGBTQ or is experiencing bullying or harassment based on gender or sexuality, you will want to be here! But even those of us who aren’t serving an LGBTQ youth can benefit from LGBTQ cultural competency. In the CASA advocacy role, we may work with LGBTQ parents, lawyers, social workers, and more.

CAL CASA Presents Mental Health and LGBTQ Advocacy Symposium
Saturday, April 14, 2012 – 9AM – 4:30PM
Preservation Park, Oakland
Ginn House – Large Parlor 660 13th Street, Oakland, CA 94612

For more information, click on this link.

In discussions on the increasing cost of housing, the impact it has on foster youth is rarely considered. The lack of affordable housing may result in a youth being removed from their parents care, placed out of county making parental visits difficult, increased difficulty in reunification, or a number of other challenges to child welfare. Additionally, CASA volunteers must often travel greater distances to visit their youth who are placed out of county. A new bill, Senate Bill 1220, was introduced last week, which would create a fund for the preservation of affordable housing collected from real estate transactions. This fund would support low- and moderate-income households, rental housing, foreclosure mitigation, and homeownership opportunities. To read more about how housing affects the foster care system or to read more about Senate Bill 1220, please click here.