By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

WARSAW — If you have a love for local children, Court Appointed Special Advocates of Kosciusko County can use your help.

“We’re passionate about children,” said former CASA volunteer and current CASA of Kosciusko County Advocacy Specialist Aimee Kintzel. “We are not the typical volunteer experience, so a passion for children (is essential).”

The county’s CASA, like the other 87 groups around the state, works to assist children in the court system.

“We recruit, train and support community volunteers who advocate for abused and neglected children,” said CASA of Kosciusko County Executive Director Erin Rowland Jones. “Indiana statute requires that you either have a guardian ad litem, which is typically an attorney and would be expensive for the county, or a CASA volunteer to be in all the child welfare cases.”

“We’re on every Child in Need of Services case in Kosciusko County,” she added. “The judges often appoint us to family law cases where there may be some issues of safety or questions about that.”

CASAs meet at least monthly with the children who they’ve been named to represent. That helps the volunteers inform the judge on the children’s cases, “what the children need and what their wishes are,” said Rowland Jones.

“We can’t do that if we don’t know them, so it’s very much a relation-type volunteer position where you are meeting with your child very often, talking to them about what’s going on, but also just playing with them, reading them a book,” said Rowland Jones. “A lot of good information comes out of just engaging with that child.”

Kintzel shared how she was able to get a child to open up when she was a CASA just by playing LEGOs with him.

CASAs almost always meet with their kids outside the Kosciusko County Justice Building as “this building’s pretty intimidating,” said Rowland Jones.

Those places include school and the children’s homes or foster homes.

“Sometimes we need to talk to them when maybe a parent or placement isn’t around, so we’ll try to do that at school or say, ‘Can you bring them to the park and you can maybe sit at the bench while we talk,’ so we try not to do anything where we’re just totally alone with them in a nonpublic place,” said Rowland Jones.

CASAs then prepare information to present to the judge.

“We ask that they (come to all hearings) if they’re able,” said Rowland Jones. “If a volunteer is unable, that’s why we have people like Aimee that work with them and know the case backwards and forwards that can speak.”

Rowland Jones mentioned the child advocacy also extends outside the courtroom.

“We’ll meet with the team that’s involved with the parents and the child and try to advocate to make sure their medical needs, mental health needs, educational needs, that those are all being met,” she said. “We a lot of times have communication with the schools, how are they doing, what’s their behavior, what are their grades? And if there are needs there we try to get those needs met while we’re a part of that case, so if they need a tutor, how can we best set that up?”

Volunteers are asked to commit to 18 months when they sign up as CASAs as cases don’t usually exceed that. A CASA will only be assigned to one or two cases at a time as “it gets to be really hectic if you do more than that,” said Kintzel.

If a case has multiple children on it, one CASA will be assigned to all of them as the organization looks at family units.

CASAs must be 21 years old and “pass background checks … and go through our 33 hours of training,” said Rowland Jones. “And then at that point once you graduate from your training and fulfill the obligations of that, you can take a case.”

The volunteers are required to do 12 additional hours of training annually.

CASAs don’t actually have to be residents of Kosciusko County to work with the county’s CASA, but must be prepared to travel to serve those whose cases are going through Kosciusko’s court system.

Kids served range from birth to age 18, with Rowland Jones noting sometimes cases will have those older than 18 due to special circumstances.

“Most of our children are seven years of age or younger, over half of them, so that is tough,” said Rowland Jones. “We get a lot of babies and so part of that is … they don’t talk, but (we spend) time with them, cuddling them, seeing how they’re developing.”

“In 2022, we served 143 kids,” said Rowland Jones. “I think we had 50 active volunteers, and they donated over 3,900 hours.”

There’s still that same number of volunteers this year, she said.

“(As of mid-March) we have advocated for 103 children and currently we are assigned to and working with 87 children,” said Rowland Jones.

She said she’d like to have 75-80 volunteers total.

People may call (574) 372-2401 or check out CASA of Kosciusko County’s website casachildren.com to learn how to volunteer.

The organization also welcomes donations with people able to give through the website as well.

With next month being Child Abuse Prevention Month, CASA of Kosciusko County has a number of events planned.

Those include its march around the Kosciusko County Courthouse’s square and planting of pinwheels, set for noon Wednesday, April 12.

“We’ve got a speaker from (the Department of Child Services),” said Rowland Jones. “I’ll be saying a few words and then (former Kosciusko County Jail Chemical Addiction Program Coordinator) Courtney Jenkins is going to say a few words as well.”

Other events include a coloring contest and special givebacks at Culver’s on U.S. 30 in Warsaw from 5-8 p.m. Monday, April 17, and the Warsaw Hacienda on Tuesday, April 25. More information is at the above website.