Our office noticed a steady increase in the number of years children are in State’s custody as well as an increase in the number of children that are destined to age out of care. Our agency had a number of volunteers who were already committed to this long term advocacy and were modeling this support with little training or understanding how impactful their commitment to the youth is.

We created the CASA Connecting Youth Possibilities Initiative (CYP) to concentrate on developing a more intensely focused set of volunteers to advocate for youth that are in post-termination phases of court proceedings and are meeting barriers in finding permanency. The scope of the role includes all traditional CASA volunteer expectations, with more focus on developing independent living skills to ensure youth have an increased chance of successful independence with a decreased chance of re-entering the system ie: incarceration, homelessness, parents of children in abuse and neglect proceedings.

Volunteers that decide to participate in the CYP Initiative will have transparent information about how long the youth’s case could remain open rather than the traditional expectation of one year of commitment to a case.