Volunteers Stay Connected with Children Amid Pandemic

By Alex Paquet

In a time marked by distanced relationships, dedicated community members have gone to great lengths to stay connected with kids in Ohio’s child welfare system.

“Often, children who have been abused or neglected lack consistent, responsive and nurturing adult relationships. Trusting and healthy relationships allow children to heal from the trauma they have experienced,” says Bill Payne, a volunteer with Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Franklin County.

CASA is an agency under the Franklin County Board of Commissioners that trains volunteers to become lay Guardians ad Litem. These volunteers ensure that children who have been abused or neglected have a consistent voice in court hearings concerning their placement, visitation schedule, and service plan. Over the course of up to two years, a volunteer makes monthly visits with the child or sibling group, talks to their parents, school counselors, and clinicians, and then shares the child’s perspective in court, advocating for their best interest. This consistency and focus on the child’s perspective have become all the more important amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“As a Judge,” says Franklin County Domestic and Juvenile Court Judge Lasheyl Stroud, “it is invaluable to hear from the child without the child enduring the trauma of physically entering the cCourthouse. My best decisions are made when my judicial lens captures the full picture of the child’s world. I am so very grateful that the CASA staff was able to pivot [to virtual training and visits] to ensure that the children of Franklin County continue to have a voice in the cCourtroom amidst these uncertain times.”

In addition to straining many social services, the pandemic has exacerbated long-standing racial health disparities, creating what CAANJ contributor Rev. Dr. Tim Ahrens calls ‘A Pandemic within a Pandemic’. Coinciding with The Franklin County Board of Health declaring racism a public health crisis in May of 2020, many institutions, including child welfare organizations, have begun using data-driven approaches to examine the prevalence of racism and disproportionality in their work. In Franklin County, for example, African Americans make up 23% of the population, yet African American children make up 45% of CASA’s case load. While the reasons for this disproportionality are plentiful, addressing bias within child welfare workers and systems is a crucial step to creating better outcomes for children.

Bias does its worst work when people make quick decisions with incomplete data. Sometimes, child welfare workers and magistrates are tasked with making large decisions about the lives of children without knowing everything they’d like to. Too often, the information that goes missing is the child’s perspective, a gap that CASA dutifully works to fill.

“I think so much of bias across systems comes from working with many cases with negative outcomes that one may come to expect those negative outcomes,” says Morgan Bommer-Guinn, Director of Volunteer Management for CASA. “If somebody has as much information as possible, they are able to better gauge the situation with more accuracy, so it is not conflated with their past experiences.”

Confronting CASA volunteers’ own bias is a recurring part of their training, and a core practice of staff. During training, BommerGuinn says, “We teach volunteers how to self-identify, slow down, and reflect on how personal bias could impact a case before they begin working with a child or family.”

Beyond advocating for a child’s best interest, simply listening to a child, being present and being a role model can build a child’s resiliency. Between children and CASA volunteers of color, sometimes that resiliency stems from just having a consistent adult who looks like them.

“The power of being there,” says Bill Payne, “cannot be underestimated.”

Alex Paquet is the Volunteer Outreach Coordinator for CASA of Franklin County.