COUNTY — For decades, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASAs) have worked to provide a sense of security and continuity for children who find themselves caught up in the court system as their parents and caregivers attempt to navigate complicated legal challenges.
According to information provided by the state of New Jersey, the program, which exists as an unfunded mandate in every county, is designed to “help monitor abused and neglected children in out-of-home placements. CASA fulfills this mission by the careful recruitment, training and supervision of community volunteers who are then assigned to a child in the foster care system. The primary objective of CASA is to represent to the court the best interests of the abused and neglected child to whom he or she has been assigned.”
In December of last year, CASA of Passaic County expanded its operations to bring services to the local region after CASA of Union County was found to be non-compliant with certain state-level requirements. Now, the organization has re-branded itself under the name Child Focus, to, as the organization’s executive director, Erica Fischer-Kaslander said, “clear up any confusion about who we serve and the services that we provide.”
“We started CASA of Passaic County in 2007 and have continued to grow throughout the years. By 2019, our caseload was at capacity,” Ms. Fischer-Kaslander said.
Then, in 2020, CASA of Passaic County was approved to start a new program known as Safe Babies. Safe Babies is a federally-funded initiative that brings foster parents (now called “resource parents”), biological parents and legal teams to the table as part of what Ms. Fischer-Kaslander called “a collaborative, alternative program for families with children under the age of 3.”
“At that point, we were already leaning towards a name change because Safe Babies and CASA are two cooperative but separate initiatives and it was causing confusion for a lot of folks,” Ms. Fischer-Kaslander said.
Then, at the end of last year, the state approached the Passaic Countybased organization and asked it to expand its services to include Union County.
“Once we added in a new geographic location, we realized that we would absolutely need to change the name,” Ms. Fischer-Kaslander said.
Just last year, Child Focus states on its new website, the organization’s CASA program provided 344 children with 211 volunteer advocates.
In addition, the New Jersey Safe Babies Court Team (the official name for the Safe Babies initiative) program provided individual care to 43 vulnerable babies and toddlers across Passaic, Essex and Hudson counties.
Safe Babies currently operates in Passaic, Essex and Hudson counties. And while the service is not yet available in Union County, Ms. Fischer-Kaslander said the organization is hopeful that it will be able to offer its more holistic approach to the local region in the near future.
Now that the organization has expanded its operations, it plans to bring another valuable resource, the Open Door Store, to its new facilities in Elizabeth.
According to the information provided by Child Focus, the Open Door Store is “a unique store-like setting where children and families can access essentials at no cost.”
In the meantime, however, Child Focus is experiencing a critical shortage of CASA volunteers.
“We only have about 20 percent of the volunteers that we need to serve Union County,” Ms. Fischer-Kaslander said. “The training program is intensive, and we realize that, but this is such an incredibly important service. It can be as life changing for our volunteers as it is for the children that we work with.”
Child Focus will host a series of informational sessions for potential volunteers over the course of the coming months. There is no commitment required during these initial meetings.
For more information, including a list of upcoming informational sessions, visit childfocusnj.org.
