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About Our Organization
About Our Local Program
The mission of CASA of Peoria County is to advocate for abused and neglected children in Peoria County through the services of specially trained community volunteers. At the end of 2008, there were 1,240 pending abuse and neglect cases in the Peoria County Juvenile Court. Many of those cases represent more than one child. Our court and social services are overburdened. The need is great for CASA volunteers!
Friends Asking Friends
Forgotten Children
EMERGENCY APPEAL
The recession is fracturing stress lines in American families. As the unemployment rate rises and the stock market drops, kids right here in Peoria County are getting a frightening education in the power of economic indicators. Parents are losing jobs. A report released this March shows that one of every 50 kids in the US is homeless each year, and that number will certainly rise as the recession sweeps more families out of their homes.
Grim articles have appeared in newspapers across the country—from Newsday in New York to the Sacramento Bee—citing increased child abuse reports. Nobody can say for sure that the recession is causing this spike, but the collective gut feeling among child welfare experts is that it is. Parents, stressed beyond their breaking points by forces out of their control, can make split-second decisions that put their children in jeopardy. When home is no longer safe, these kids will enter the foster care/child welfare system.
Once in the system, children need an advocate to ensure they’re ultimately reunited with their families or placed in another safe home. That’s exactly what CASA volunteers do. In Peoria County, 45 volunteers are already serving 77 kids through CASA of Peoria County and we’re expecting the need for our services to grow. But the same recession that is driving the kids into the system has imperiled our funding. We need your help.
The good news is that CASA runs on the power of trained volunteers who save taxpayers millions of dollars each year by getting kids out of foster care and into safe, permanent homes. The human cost of foster care is devastating. And the financial cost is staggering: Taxpayers pay an estimated $2,400 per month to support a child living in foster care. By contrast, it costs just $100 a month to give a child a CASA volunteer - and ultimately spare the child many months in care. Think about it: Every $1,200 you donate gives a child a CASA volunteer for a full year.
As the economy tumbles to record depths, you can make a sure-fire investment in our most valuable resource: our kids. Please give to CASA of Peoria County today.
Please support CASA of Peoria County's Forgotten Children Campaign by donating at http://casaofpeoriacounty.kintera.org-
Stand up for foster kids, raise awareness about the need for CASA volunteers, and raise money to recruit and train volunteers for every foster child.
About National CASA
On any given day, 500,000 children in the US are living in foster care because they cannot live safely at home. But only half of these kids have someone who speaks out just for them—a Court Appointed Special Advocate, or CASA volunteer.
CASA volunteers (sometimes called Guardians Ad Litem, or GAL volunteers) are appointed by judges to be the independent eyes and ears of the court, watching over and advocating for a child until the child is placed in a safe, permanent home.
The National CASA Association links a network of 954 local CASA programs in 49 states. Last year, 59,000 CASA volunteers served 240,000 children and youth living in foster care, getting them into safe, permanent homes sooner and saving taxpayers an estimated $582 billion. It’s a huge return on a very modest investment—the cost to give a kid a CASA volunteer is just $950 a year.
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