When the Court, the CASA, and the Department of Social Services are satisfied that a child has achieved permanency in his or her placement, the final recommendation in the CASA Court Report at times reads, "CASA will continue to monitor this case for three months." Often, our continued contact with the family and the child's teachers and counselors provides no more than continuity and reassurance for the children as they remain in foster care or return to the custody of their parents or other relatives. But sometimes CASAs in the monitoring phase observe a family's living conditions deteriorate and the children's distress register in their own behavior.

In the cases of several families we serve, the parents had complied with every condition stipulated by the Court and the children returned to safer, healthier homes. Things simply didn't stay that way. With no upcoming hearings, the children at risk no longer had a Guardian ad litem to represent their interests, no longer had a caseworker at the Department of Social Services, and the children became hard to locate as they traveled between counties. But they still had a CASA.

In one case, three girls had been placed with their aunt after being removed from the custody of their drug-addicted mother due to neglect. When the case reached the monitoring phase, the CASA Supervisors discussed whether to request dismissal, but decided that in good conscience they could not say that these children had achieved permanency and no longer needed advocacy. The fact that they had attended school regularly and not gotten into trouble for almost a year seemed to be due more to their own resourcefulness and street smarts than to adequate adult supervision. The family had moved from downtown Charlottesville to an apartment complex just over the county line, which meant that the city social worker who had worked with the family for three years was no longer assigned to their case. Medicaid paid for court-ordered family counseling, but the counselor reported that the aunt never brought the girls to her office for their appointments. And the CASA voiced concern about contact with their mother. The children's situation seemed precarious, so CASA decided to stay on.

Four months later, the family was evicted from their apartment. Farmed out to different relatives where they slept on the floor, the girls each missed 18 days or more of school over two months, and the eldest was suspended for fighting. Their CASA continued to meet with the girls after school and stayed in close contact with their guidance counselors while making frequent reports to Child Protective Services in the county where they now lived. After being alerted by the CASA, the children's Guardian ad litem asked to be reappointed by the Court; the CASA also initiated contact between social workers in the City and County. Ultimately, the case found its way back to court and the children were removed from their aunt's custody.

To me, this situation highlights not a flaw in the system but rather the unique and indispensable service that the CASA program provides: staying on to monitor a fragile family's hard won gains, after other agencies can no longer justify the time or the funding. Without a CASA, these children would eventually have come to the attention of the court, but it would have taken longer, they would have missed a lot more school, and possibly suffered other serious harm due to their need of services. After the hearing at which the children learned that they were moving to a foster home 50 miles from Charlottesville, the CASA sat down with three sad children and said simply, "This is very hard. I just want you to know I'm still here."