CASANYS Initiatives - CASA/CAC Partnership Project

CASA/CHILD ADVOCACY CENTER PARTNERSHIP
The NYS Office of Children and Family Services and
The NYS Child Advocacy Resource and Consultation Center

The CASA/CAC Partnership Project is a collaborative effort between the New York State Office of Children and Families (NYS OCFS), CASA: Advocates for Children in NYS (CASANYS), the NYS Child Advocacy Resource and Consultation Center (NYSCARCC), and local CASA and CAC programs. The overall goal of the project is to improve the advocacy and reduce the trauma children experience when they are victims of sexual abuse. Funds supporting this project are used to facilitate training of and collaboration among professionals and volunteers involved in permanency planning and administration of justice for these child victims in New York State.

Funding to support training and development have been provided to four CASA programs in the state to develop effective partnerships at the local level. CASAs, CACs and MDTs work with many of the same organizations in their communities and are likely to serve a number of the same children. Over 90% of the CASA volunteers at the partnership programs reported that they had handled at least one case involving the sexual abuse of a child that was either known or suspected. Yet, before this project began, CASAs and CACs and MDTs had not worked together in any formal capacity.

Grant funds facilitated the development of agreements between CASAs and CAC/MDTs. Partnership programs, with technical assistance from CASANYS, developed and finalized partnership agreements to coordinate communication and management of cases. Each program was careful to obtain the input of the different legal, social service and judicial personnel and/or agencies currently involved in child sexual abuse cases in order to ensure that the CASA/CAC partnership would complement, not duplicate, advocacy services available in each community. Partnership programs began referring cases to each other in March of 2002.

A Permanency & Justice Task Force (2003-2004) was formed as part of this project, reporting to the Children's Justice Task Force, to identify ways to promote and support training and collaboration among professionals and volunteers involved in permanency planning and administration of justice for child victims in New York State .

CASANYS has continued to support these partnerships and has worked to promote awareness and collaboration throughout the state. CASANYS hosted a teleconference training on Male Child Sexual Abuse in October 2005 and contracted with a consultant to prepare an in-depth in-service training module on child sexual abuse throughout the network. Future funding will hopefully allow CASANYS to conduct training coinciding with the dissemination of this curriculum, to directly support additional local partnerships, and to further the work of existing partnerships in ways that strengthen the capacity of both organizations to assist children and families.

In the fall of 2005 regional training seminars on child sexual abuse were held throughout the state. These events, jointly planned by local CASA and CAC programs, were attended by over 450 participants from CASA, OCFS, local DSS, law enforcement, mediation programs, the courts, mental health, domestic violence programs, rape crisis centers, voluntary agencies, and higher education.

CASA: Advocates for Children in NYS, Inc., as part of the CASA/CAC Partnership Project, has developed the following recommendations for building effective partnerships between CASAs and CACs. These recommendations are based on the experience and recommendations from CASAs and CACs that have worked together both nationally and in New York State:
    1. There should be a written agreement that identififes the overall goal of the partnership between the organizations (i.e. reduce trauma, improve training)
     2. Communication between programs must be ongoing and partnership activities should be regularly reviewed to ensure that they are supporting the mission of the partnership. Agreements should require at least annual reviews of partnership activities by both organizations.
    3. The frequency, purpose and type of training should be agreed to an annual basis.
    4. If the programs are located in the same building, communication and procedures must be in place to assure that the victim is never in the building at the same time that the perpetrator may be.
    5. There must be a firm policy of complete confidentiality of cases. Records can only be shared if there is a signed release of information from the individual involved or if there is a signed court order.
    6. CASAs should not be involved in the actual interview of the child at the CAC or by the MDT. If CASA is assigned to a case that is still in the investigation stage at the CAC, the CASA program director should consult with the CAC and/or MDT before interviewing the child and/or the non-offending parent or alleged perpetrator to ensure that a CASA interview will not interfere with the criminal investigation of the case.
    7. The agreement should specify if and when CASA would be invited to MDT team meetings and what the purpose of CASA participation should be.
    8. The agreement should specify how case referrals can be made to each         organization and how and when the programs will report to each other about cases they share.

The following is a case example illustrating the benefits of the CASA/CAC Partnership:

The Broome County CASA has been working on a case involving a boy, currently age ten, for the past two years. When CASA was assigned to the case, the boy was living in an apartment with his developmentally handicapped mother. The apartment condition was deplorable: sink stacked with dirty dishes, food strewn on the walls and floor, cockroaches everywhere, empty cupboards, and dirty laundry thrown on the floor. The young boy was also struggling in school. He would never return his homework, and had a difficult time grasping academic concepts. The mother rented the top two apartment units in her building and she slept in one apartment and her son slept in the apartment above her. She did so because there was only one bedroom in her apartment and she believed that her son was old enough to have his own room. Due to the repeated requests of the CASA volunteer and the facts he gathered, the child was removed from his mother's home in December 2001.

Since his placement in foster care, the child is thriving. He is maintaining straight A's in school and will be tested for accelerated classes. He has stopped wetting the bed and he is making friends. During the CASA's visit to the foster home he started to tell his CASA worker and his foster mother about things his mother and he used to do in bed together. The CASA immediately alerted the DSS caseworker. She called in a hot line report and told the CASA to have the child keep a journal of his feelings.

In March 2002, the CASA volunteer received a telephone call from an intake supervisor at DSS asking him to meet the detective, the child and DSS at Crime Victims Assistance Center that day. The members of the multi-disciplinary team invited the CASA volunteer because they thought it would help the child feel more safe and comfortable during the interview process. After meeting with the team members, the CASA volunteer met with the child and told him what was going to happen. A representative from CVAC took the CASA volunteer and the child on a tour of the building including the interview room. During the interview, the CASA sat in the waiting room. After the child was done he sat with the CASA and they talked and played games while everyone reviewed the tape. Based on the interview and the information given by the CASA and foster parent the mother was questioned and subsequently arrested. After the interview, the detective on the team said he felt the boy did so well precisely because of the CASA volunteer's presence.