Sunday, December 31, 2006
Editorial: A more robust CASA program can only help in Giles
Special advocates have a good track record in other places.
From the RoundTable blog
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The child abuse and neglect rate in Giles County is absolutely unacceptable. With 104 substantiated cases in the last year for which figures are available, the rate works out to 27.2 per 1,000 children.
That's seven times as many as the state average of 3.8.
Help is on the way, though. Last year, the organization Court Appointed Special Advocate opened an office in Giles County. This fall, that office swore in its first three volunteers.
CASA sends those volunteers into homes to observe parents and children. The volunteers then share their observations with judges involved in custody decisions.
CASA volunteers, who receive at least 40 hours of training, can spend more time than social workers with individual families.
"It's extremely useful because they have so much time that they spend on individual cases, and then they file very detailed reports at each stage of the process," Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court Judge H.L. Chitwood told Roanoke Times reporter Albert Raboteau.
These volunteers are special people who go well beyond what's expected of them.
In a 2000 commentary written when she was not working for The Roanoke Times and while she was a board member of Roanoke Valley CASA, Beth Macy said of the organization's volunteers, "We need to thank them for standing up for the people who don't have anyone else to speak for them. We need to thank them for being a child's voice -- not only in courtrooms, but also in living rooms, in principal's offices, in detox-center waiting rooms."
CASA volunteers aren't the only ones rising to the challenge in Giles. The county Department of Social Services created a position solely to focus on preventing abuse from recurring in troubled families.
Another group of agencies is working on a program called Healthy Families that focuses on new parents and preventing abuse and neglect.
Giles' high rates could be partially attributed to increased efforts to encourage reporting of suspected abuse, or a rise in cases involving drugs.
But that's little comfort. Because abuse cases so often go unreported, it's a good bet that, efforts to encourage reporting aside, Giles' true rates are even higher than the current numbers indicate.
All these efforts -- by CASA, the county social services department and other agencies -- can only help root out abuse and neglect, and help prevent new cases.
