UPDATE: A key CASA funder is “looking into” the Snohomish County CASA scandal

● The law firm that exposed the scandal filed complaints with the agency, and with National CASA.

● The Snohomish program is so lily-white it has to use a photo from National CASA to show a Black CASA volunteer. Several other CASA programs use the same photo.

Responding to a complaint from the law firm that exposed the Snohomish County CASA scandal, a key funder for CASA says it’s “looking into” issues raised by the firm.

The federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention provides grants to National CASA and local CASA programs. The ABC Law Group is asking that  “funding from OJJDP that goes to the CASA program in Snohomish County, Washington be investigated for ethics violations.”  They’re also asking for “a federal investigation/oversight into this program which receives your funding.”

Less than 24 hours after receiving the request, OJJDP Administrator Caren Harp replied “We’re looking into it.”

The law firm also filed a formal complaint with the Executive Committee of the National CASA Board of Directors. The board is chaired by William Bell, who also is President and CEO of Casey Family Programs.

The complaint asks National CASA to investigate the Snohomish program for “on-going ethics violations which have now been shown to have hurt families.”  The complaint cites the recent scathing decision from a Washington State appellate court which “held that our CASA program engaged in the destruction of evidence, spying, perjury, abusive use of litigation, threatening lawyers and violating the appearance of fairness.”

Up to now, National CASA’s response can be summed up this way:

You can find out all about the Snohomish County CASA scandal here.

And there’s more …

The generic CASA doesn’t look much like the real CASAs

The complaint to National CASA also seeks an investigation into “false advertising and recruitment practices at Snohomish County.”

Among other things, there’s the matter of this flyer published by the program. See that nice picture of an African-American man – the only photo depicting a CASA volunteer?  There’s just one problem:  Right now, according to the Snohomish County program itself, of the 57 volunteers in the program, the total number of African-American volunteers is exactly zero.  The complaint notes that “The flyer to promote CASA contains more diversity regarding African American families than the entire program itself.”

And Snohomish County is not alone. NCCPR ran a Google Image search. We found the same photo of the same volunteer on websites for CASA programs in Kansas City, Missouri, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, Northern Neck CASA in Virginia, Blue Ridge CASA, also in Virginia, Clayton County CASA in Georgia, the Texarkana Texas CASA program and the Arkansas State CASA Association. On the Arkansas website, his picture appears above the caption “Our spotlight shines on those volunteers who have gone above and beyond the necessary.” But click on the link to find the real volunteer they’re profiling, and it’s a white woman. 

Looks like Generic CASA used to be on the site for Kansas CASA too. That actually would be an improvement. About ten years ago, a local CASA organization in Kansas held a fundraiser that included a Blackface act.

Generic CASA also turns up in a slick promotional video from National CASA itself.

This doesn’t mean that none of these chapters has an African-American volunteer.  But, as noted above, the one in Snohomish does not.

We also know that CASA volunteers are 80 to 90 percent white.  And we know that, according to the most comprehensive study ever done of CASA, commissioned by the National CASA Association itself, volunteers spend less time on a case if the child is Black. 

That study also found that CASA doesn’t work.  A study specific to Snohomish County found that the Snohomish County program doesn’t work either.

Yet still, National CASA has not responded to the scandal in Snohomish County.  Perhaps now, they’ll come up with a response better than this:

A deafening silence from National CASA as an appellate court blasts a scandal-plagued CASA program in Washington State

● The court overturned the termination of a family’s parental rights, and ordered that the case start over.

● The court also ordered the CASA program, and the county Superior Court – which it called “a biased tribunal” -- cut off from any involvement in the case.

● But through it all, the National CASA Association has taken no public action against the program. Click on the audio to get a good sense of National CASA’s response:

To read all about the Snohomish County CASA Scandal, see these previous posts to this Blog.

UPDATE AUGUST 28, 2019 The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is "looking into" the Snohomish County CASA scandal.  OJJDP helps fund CASA programs. Their response comes less than 24 hours after the law firm that first exposed the scandal filed a complaint. Details here. 

                                                                                                             

UPDATE, AUGUST 18, 2019: The Everett Herald has an excellent story about the whole Snohomish County CASA scandal, with a clear step-by-step overview of what happened.

Of course court officials, who were instrumental in causing the problems and turned themselves into what an appellate court called a “biased tribunal” now claim they’ve fixed everything. In other words, the foxes have doubled the guard on the henhouse.

But the most striking part of the story is this: The Snohomish County Court system says that it “increased training [for CASAs] to, among other things, stress honesty, truthfulness and the correct way to handle documents.”

Now. one might be able to make a case that there is something complicated about handling documents.  But what does it say about the inherent nature of CASA that it can so corrupt the ethics of good people that they actually need training to know they’re supposed to be honest and truthful?

The problem with the scandal at the Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program in Snohomish County, Wash.,*  is that court decisions describe so much misconduct and it’s so awful that it’s hard to know where to begin. 

So perhaps it’s best to begin here: Everything discussed below is documented in the public record – not in assertions by parties, but in decisions by a judge; decisions that run to hundreds of pages.  And now, we can add three more judges and 29 more pages.

On Monday, an appellate court panel ruled unanimously that there was blatant bias, not just on the part of the CASA program but also the Snohomish County Superior Court (which, at one point actually declared itself and the CASA program effectively one-and-the-same).

The appellate court found so much bias that it threw out the termination of parental rights at the center of it all and ordered everyone back to square one.  They also ordered that square one, and everything else about the case, be located someplace other than Snohomish County.

The bias runs so deep, the appellate court found, that even bringing in a judge from another county isn’t good enough. They tried that, and that judge upheld the termination. But the appellate court found that the judge

heard oral argument on the motions in Snohomish County and relied on a record generated in that biased tribunal in making his decisions.  For that reason the orders [he] entered … do not escape the taint of bias and must be vacated.

It started with CASA

It all began with the CASA program.  So we should begin with a reminder, from a previous post, of what CASA is all about.

CASAs are minimally-trained amateurs, overwhelmingly white and middle-class, who are sent out to investigate overwhelmingly poor disproportionately nonwhite families. Then they recommend to the judge whether the children should be separated from those families, sometimes forever. Judges typically take the advice. 

The most comprehensive study ever done of the program, a study commissioned by the National CASA Association itself, found that it does nothing to make children safer. The study also found that CASA prolongs foster care and reduces the chances children will be placed with relatives instead of strangers.

One CASA program saw no problem when a performer at a fundraiser dressed in blackface, another CASA program fell apart as soon as it had to confront issues of race. A law review article called CASA “an exercise of white supremacy.” 

And for many years, the Snohomish County program used a volunteer who would go on to write a vile screed about the parents he investigated (and another vile screed about Muslims). They are so awful Donald Trump would probably tweet them if he knew about them.

In the case at the center of the scandal, an African-American child was placed with a white foster family days after birth.  And it appears that, from day one, the CASA assigned to the case would do anything to keep it that way, including leaking confidential documents to the foster family.

Another CASA infiltrated a listserv for family defense attorneys to learn about their strategy. (“Infiltrated” isn’t my word; it’s from a decision by Judge Anita Farris, who presided over the case. Judge Farris was praised by the appellate court for acting with integrity throughout.)

But it didn’t stop there.  Judge Farris found that the CASA program conducted a campaign of threats and intimidation against the parents’ lawyers. 

And Judge Farris used another word – one she had not used in her entire judicial career until this case: Perjury.  Judge Farris ruled that  the program engaged in “the blatant withholding and destruction of evidence … rampant, continuing lying …” and “pervasive and egregious” misconduct.

The appellate court seemed particularly struck by the fact that CASA’s

entire hard copy file for this dependency mysteriously “disappeared” from the [CASA] Program’s possession during the post-trial proceedings regarding the [CASAs’] misconduct.

The appellate court decision only scratches the surface of the misconduct.  There is more detail, and links to Judge Ferris’s decisions in this previous post and this one. 

Thumb on the scales of justice

But it didn’t stop there.  The family wasn’t just up against a CASA program that engaged in what Judge Farris called “pervasive and egregious” misconduct. They were up against a court system that did everything it could to help the CASA program win this case, putting a giant thumb on the scales of justice.  Eventually, the Snohomish County Superior Court claimed that it and the CASA program were essentially one-and-the-same – and that forced Judge Farris to recuse herself. 

Somewhat oddly, she still ruled in favor of termination of parental rights, apparently concluding that even disregarding the CASA program’s behavior there was reason to do so. But the appellate court disagreed, finding that the behavior of the court system and the CASA program made a fair trial impossible.  But that was the only area of disagreement.  The appellate court did not dispute any of Judge Farris’ findings about CASA or the Snohomish County Superior Court.  On the contrary, citing precedent that “unchallenged findings are verities on appeal” the appellate judges wrote this:

Here, Judge Farris displayed no personal bias and attempted to conduct an unbiased proceeding. But the sticky wicket is that the tribunal in which A.H.’s dependency and termination proceedings took place was biased because of the involvement of superior court employees working against the parents in this case. … And Judge Farris entered many unchallenged findings of fact in her recusal order and memorandum decision…

All of this led the judges to rule, in effect, that the Snohomish County Superior Court,  by taking sides at all, let alone siding with a CASA program that Judge Farris found engaged in “pervasive and egregious” misconduct is, itself, so biased that it should not be allowed anywhere near this case.

The court ordered a new trial in another county, and the appointment of a new lawyer for the child.

Most media failed, too

All this, of course, challenges the master narrative of most Washington State media. They cling to the view that all parents who become enmeshed in the system are at best sick and at worst evil, and send the message that foster parents, CASAs etc. can do no wrong.  That explains why with the exception of some excellent reporting from Seattle television station KING, the scandal has been ignored. [UPDATE, AUGUST 18: As noted above, the Everett Herald has now done an excellent story.]

Even worse is the behavior of the National CASA Association. The Snohomish program describes itself as “an associated member of Washington State CASA and National CASA.”

So listen again to the functional equivalent of what we’ve heard from National CASA about this scandal:

So, does National CASA have a problem with one of its associated members behaving this way or not? 

What about the other cases?

What are the odds that a CASA program would engage in “pervasive and egregious” misconduct in only one case?  What are the odds that the court system would side with the CASA program and against a family in only one case?   What are the odds that a longtime volunteer who calls the parents he investigated “felons,” “junkies,” and  “dumb as dirt” may have made some, uh, erroneous recommendations that were accepted by judges?

What is to be done about all those other cases?

*-Although it has always been a CASA program, for many years it called itself a Volunteer Guardian ad Litem (VGAL) program.  It’s the same thing, and the program has long been an associated member of National CASA.  It now calls itself a CASA program, but the appellate court decision still uses VGAL.

#CASAsoWhite: A Former CASA on the Parents He Dealt With: “Felons,” “Junkies,” “Dumb as Dirt”

He says he spent 20 years in the same program that was excoriated by a judge for  “the blatant withholding and destruction of evidence and … rampant continuing lying …” and  “pervasive and egregious” misconduct.

Most of the time on this blog I comment on the work of others, whether it's research or journalism. Today, however, the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog breaks some news. No news organization in Washington State or elsewhere has previously reported on the disturbing comments of a former CASA volunteer in that state discussed below. And only KING-TV has reported on the other issues concerning the Snohomish County CASA program.

As Merlin Sprague tells the story, it all began in the mid-1980s when he tried to volunteer for a Big Brothers program in Snohomish County, Washington. He was rejected.  Or, as he puts it “the pecksniffs and [sic] Big Siblings can be excessively picky” and “the shrink who evaluated my suitability found I didn’t have sufficient respect for authority.” 

But, he said, the “shrink” suggested an alternative. “She suggested I volunteer for the county’s [Volunteer] Guardian ad Litem program (a.k.a. CASA, or Court-Appointed Special Advocate).”

He says that after the program accepted him he remained a Volunteer Guardian ad litem (VGAL) – in other words, a CASA - for 20 years.

CASAs are minimally-trained amateurs, overwhelmingly white and middle-class, who are sent out to investigate overwhelmingly poor disproportionately nonwhite families. Then they recommend to the judge whether the children should be separated from those families, sometimes forever. Judges typically take the advice. 

The most comprehensive study ever done of the program, a study commissioned by the National CASA Association itself, found that it does nothing to make children safer. The study also found that CASA prolongs foster care and reduces the chances children will be placed with relatives instead of strangers.

One CASA program saw no problem when a performer at a fundraiser dressed in blackface, another fell apart as soon as it had to confront issues of race. A law review article called CASA “an exercise of white supremacy.”  And now, meet Merlin Sprague:

In a blog post in January, the man who says he spent 20 years telling judges what they should do about families told the world what he thinks of those families. He wrote:

All of us in programs like the Guardians ad Litem see that:

The vast preponderance of children who are abused and neglected come from impoverished parents.

The parents are unschooled and ignorant and are satisfied with the situation. This, of course, explains the poverty.

Many parents are of low IQ.  Like one of my colleagues said, “They’re as dumb as dirt”.

Over 50% of the parents are felons and junkies who are incapable of looking after their own selves, let alone their children. Of the remaining 50%, most are simply felons and junkies who haven’t yet been caught.  This includes booze and tobacco.

Merlin’s Modest Proposal

But Sprague does have a solution:

Give each poor person, man or woman, whither [sic] or not they’ve been dragged into the child welfare system, $20,000, cash money, to be surgically sterilized.

It’s a bargain, Sprague tells us, compared to the cost of raising the children who, under this plan,  won’t be born. And he adds,  

this $20,000 will not prevent the conception and birth of just one child, it will prevent the conception and birth of many as these kinds of people breed like flies.

But, says Sprague, that’s not all:

As this cohort of parents are mostly drunks and junkies, $20,000 will buy all the booze and dope they could ever want.  Consequently, there will be many overindulgences which will result in death, further reducing the numbers of people on welfare.

One can only hope that none of the families with whom Sprague dealt was Muslim – because in another post he writes that Islam is:

… a throw-back to the Stone Age when men put bones through their noses and painted themselves blue.  Islam has the morals, ethics and principles of an insect.  We must use every method at our disposal to stamp it out before it stamps us out.

Judge Anita Farris

Of course, this is just one volunteer in one CASA program. But this is the same program in which Snohomish County Judge Anita Farris found that another volunteer “infiltrated” a listserv maintained by parental defense attorneys.  It’s also the program the samejudge blasted for “the blatant withholding and destruction of evidence and … rampant continuing lying …” and for “pervasive and egregious” misconduct.

When I asked the Snohomish County VGAL program if anyone there had any comment on Sprague’s views, and on why he was accepted as a volunteer and allowed to remain a volunteer for many years, this was the entire response, in an email from Public Information & Disclosure Officer Brian Lewis: “The opinions expressed in this piece are the author's own and do not reflect the view of Snohomish County Superior Court or any of its services programs.” 

Conflicts of Interest

For her part Judge Farris is unlikely to be issuing any more rulings concerning the program.  That’s because of how the program is organized – or at least how it now says it’s organized.

CASA programs take a variety of organizational forms. But since its establishment in 1979, the one in Snohomish County has been run directly by the county court system itself.  Late last year, in legal papers, the program stopped calling itself the VGAL program. Instead it started referring to itself as “the Court.” 

But how can a judge of any given court rule on alleged misconduct when the accused is – the court itself?  Judge Farris concluded she can’t. So she recused herself. A judge from another county will have to decide a whole slew of issues growing out of the case that exposed the alleged misconduct.

This issue has arisen at least once before. Florida took its CASA program (also called a GAL program in that state) away from the courts after a legislative report concluded that the arrangement created “actual and perceived conflicts of interest.”

That does leave one intriguing question: If, all along, the Snohomish County VGAL program was actually the court itself, did that program have an unfair advantage in every case in which it intervened?  Do hundreds, perhaps thousands of cases need to be reopened?

If so, it might be a good idea to start with the cases handled by Merlin Sprague.

#CASAsoWhite: Judge’s decisions reveal extent of scandal at a Washington State CASA

Last year, I wrote about the scandal at the Volunteer Guardian-ad-litem (VGAL) program in Snohomish County, Wash., an affiliate of the state’s Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) network.

CASA is a white, middle-class bastion of the child welfare system, a system that tears apart families that are overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately families of color. The most comprehensive study ever done of the program found that it does nothing to make children safer. The study also found that CASA prolongs foster care and reduces the chances children will be placed with relatives instead of strangers.

Last year, I wrote about how Judge Anita Farris found that a volunteer for the Snohomish County program “infiltrated” – the judge’s word – a listserv for family defense attorneys and passed on what she’d learned so her program could use the information against families. The judge called the guardian’s explanation of her actions “filled with lies.”

But that was only the beginning. In two more court rulings, revolving around the same termination of parental rights case, Judge Farris has blasted the VGAL program for “the blatant withholding and destruction of evidence and … rampant continuing lying …”

“This was not just a lot of lying,” Judge Farris said inone decision:

It was lying with no concern that you were lying. It was lying with “I don’t care if I get caught.” It was lying again and again and again after getting caught. It was lying under circumstances where it could be absolutely proven you were lying.

“Pervasive and egregious” misconduct

In another decision, the judge said her rulings “should not be interpreted to mean the entire program or every VGAL has committed misconduct. They have not.” But for those who did, she declared: “The misconduct was not minor or insubstantial. It was pervasive and egregious.”

There’s more about this ruling in this story from KING-TV:

The judge found that the misconduct violated state and county rules for Guardians ad litem.  The program’s explanation: According to the judge, well into the proceedings, the head of the program declared that no one in the program had ever heard of such rules. Said Judge Farris:

Are we to believe that [the program’s] staff attorney … who’s been there for decades, has never once mentioned the GAL rules to any VGAL employee?  … It would be akin to an attorney general saying none of his deputies was aware of the criminal code…

Judge Farris found that VGALs do get training in “how to keep things out of discovery,” the legal process by which each party obtains information from the other essential for preparing their case. These actions, she said, denied parents information they have an “absolute right” to receive.  Sometimes, she wrote, the files just disappeared:

The sheer number of unexplained missing pieces of evidence, all showing misconduct, is remarkable. … The inescapable conclusion is that [someone] in the VGAL program scrubbed discovery to hide VGAL misconduct.

The judge found that a supervisor provided trial testimony that was:

uninformed, inconsistent, dishonest, and biased. … The mutations in testimony followed a pattern. First, she would testify to an inaccurate fact that either supported her recommendation or hid VGAL misconduct. Then, only if confronted about the inaccuracy, she would completely reverse her prior testimony and cough up the truth.

After the judge describes what she said was one misrepresentation after another, she concludes:

Not one of these fabrications did anything to promote the interests of a child. These were not well-intentioned lies. Without exception, their sole purpose was to hide the misconduct of the liar, and that was done at the expense of this child.

“A pattern of retaliation”

Also, according to Judge Farris:

The Snohomish County VGAL program engaged in a pattern of retaliation against the mother’s attorneys during this case.

 The judge noted similar complaints in other cases, though she did not rule on their validity:

One declaration [from a lawyer in another case] alleged that after an attorney had made a complaint against a Snohomish VGAL, the VGAL knew about the complaint, changed her VGAL recommendation and began a vehement witch hunt. This retaliation went on so long, and was so rabid, the lawyer felt compelled to withdraw for the sake of her client …

 Declarations also were submitted from foster parents, in another case, indicating they made a complaint against the VGAL … and the VGAL retaliated by trying to have the child removed from the foster parents.

 After listing several more instances she deemed acts of retaliation, Judge Farris concluded:

It is impossible to measure how and to what extent retaliation against a small firm in this small community affects the willingness of all parent attorneys to zealously advocate to protect their clients’ constitutional rights to raise their children. … When VGALs retaliate, they are putting their personal passions for revenge ahead of the needs of any children whose best interests they are supposed to protect.

A lawyer for the firm that was subjected to what the judge called retaliation summarized the particulars here.

As of March 13, 2017, the website for the Snohomish VGAL program states that it is still “accredited by the National CASA Association and is an associated member of Washington State CASA.”

Perhaps those groups should take a closer look at what’s going on in Snohomish County.

NCCPR News and commentary round-up, week ending August 14, 2019

Lots of news this week, starting with two important court decisions.

● An appellate court in Washington State blasted the scandal-plagued Snohomish County CASA program – that’s the one a judge found engaged in “the blatant withholding and destruction of evidence … rampant, continuing lying …” and “pervasive and egregious” misconduct. 

The appellate court also blasted the Snohomish County Superior Court for making a fair termination of parental rights trial impossible – because court employees actually worked with the CASA program instead of remaining neutral.  Through it all, the National CASA Association has remained silent.  Do they actually approve of the Snohomish County CASA program’s actions?  Details on all of this, and a link to the decision, in this NCCPR Blog Post.

● A federal appellate court also brought good news last week: It upheld the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Here’s the National Indian Child Welfare Association statement on the decision.

● In Youth Today, I review recent studies that all have one thing in common:  They demonstrate that, when it comes to reducing child abuse, there’s nothing like the transformative power of cash.  And, great news! In the same column, I reveal the apparently up-to-now secret way to target child abuse prevention without resorting to Big-Brother, privacy-invading predictive analytics!

● I have long argued that the so-called Family First act has been vastly overhyped. The funds can be used on only a few types of services and they have to meet criteria for being “evidence-based” that are vastly higher than the criteria for say, foster care or residential treatment (which have no real evidence base).  But now comes word that the federal government will be studying whether to allow funding under Family First for programs that follow the Homebuilders model for Intensive Family Preservation Services.  That alone would make Family First vastly more useful.  Here’s how Homebuilders works.  And here’s a summary of the impressive evidence base for it.

● In the Chronicle of Social Change, Vivek Sankaran writes about the need for judges to behave like – you know, judges, and enforce the law. He writes:

[T]hroughout my career, I’ve heard judges chide lawyers and parents when they emphasize the law. One frustrated judge said to a colleague, “I see you’re going down the statutory road again.” Another said to a parent, “I know there’s a legal right to ask for more visits. But if I gave it to you, then I’d have to give it to every parent.” A third said, “I know the law says that corporal punishment is allowed. But in my courtroom, this is what we do.”

And I would argue that, at its most extreme, this attitude helps explain what happened in Snohomish County (see first item above).

● Another Chronicle story looks at how “In Aftermath of Latest Child Death, L.A. Contends with Potential Foster Care Panic.”  I’ll have some thoughts on this one soon.

● In Talk Poverty Elizabeth Brico writes about how “State Laws Punish Pregnant People Just For Seeking Drug Treatment.” And of course, they also punish the children.  Ms. Brico cites an Amnesty International report documenting how such laws drive women away from treatment and away from prenatal care.

● When a parent who has lost a child to foster care – or is at risk of it – can get help from another parent who’s been through the same ordeal it can help prevent the placement, or shorten it, lessening the trauma for children.  So, Rise, a magazine written by parents who have been in this position, asks: Why aren’t more of them working in NYC? This is, of course, an excellent question for the rest of the country as well.

● Also in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has on his desk a bill that could significantly ease the trauma for children who have lost their parents forever due to termination of parental rights.  The bill would allow judges to continue contact between these children and their parents if the judge is persuaded it’s in the child’s best interests. 

In the New York Daily News, Chris Gottlieb, co-director of the Family Defense Clinic at New York University School of Law, explains why the governor should sign the bill.  And family defense attorney Amy Mulzer has a letter to the editor about the bill in the Albany Times Union.

● Until it was surpassed in 2017 by Montana, Wyoming had the dubious distinction of child removal capital of America. (It’s still #2 in that regard.)  So it’s encouraging that the legislature in that state is considering a bill that would bolster family defense.  The story illustrates the importance of both the new study showing that high-quality family defense safely reduces foster care and the change in federal rules that allows some of the cost of such defense to be reimbursed with federal funds.

● I have a guest commentary in the Times of Northwest Indiana about how the latest McLawsuit filed by the latest group founded by Marcia Lowry, A Better Childhood, may well make that state’s dismal child welfare system even worse.

● And finally, though not related directly to child protective services, Vice News has a disturbing story about how the private adoption industry coerces parents into giving up their children.  The common denominator shared by these cases and those involving CPS is poverty. The Vice story cites a survey which found that “most women … put up their babies for adoption at least in part because of financial concerns.

NCCPR in the Everett, Wash. Herald on the Snohomish County CASA scandal

Thanks to The Herald and reporter Noah Haglund for the comprehensive account of the scandal engulfing the Snohomish County Court Appointed Special Advocates (formerly Vollunteer Guardian Ad Litem) program (“Lying, spying and destroying evidence spur guardian reforms,” The Herald, Aug. 18).

In some ways, the most damning revelation about the program isn’t that its staff and volunteers as the story put it, “repeatedly crossed legal and ethical lines.” It’s not the “lying, spying, [and] withholding and destroying evidence” that the trial judge found “pervasive and egregious.”

The most telling revelation comes in the form of one step that the Snohomish County Superior Court felt the need to take in order to claim it was “fixing” the program.

Read the full column here.

And there's more about the Snohomish County CASA scandal here.

NCCPR at the Kempe Center conference: The case against CASA

 This is the text of the first of two NCCPR presentations at the 2021 Kempe Center International Virtual Conference: A Call to Action to Change Child Welfare

And see also this update on the research from The Imprint.

Most Court-Appointed Special Advocates programs call themselves CASA programs – as you’d expect.  Two programs cited in this presentation either in the past or now use a different term: Volunteer Guardian-at-Litem or VGAL.  They mean the same thing, and to avoid confusion I will refer to these programs as CASA programs throughout.  Where a quote uses the term VGAL I will substitute the term CASA.

Whatever you call it, the program I am going to discuss today is probably the most sacred cow in American child welfare; the subject of thousands of local news stories across America, gushing over how wonderful this program is.  I’m going to talk about why those stories are wrong, and how this most sacred cow in child welfare, Court-Appointed Special Advocates or CASA - harms to children.

That’s not because they want to hurt children, of course.  It was all created with the best of intentions.  CASAs still, overwhelmingly, are, to use Malcolm X’s famous phrase “kindly intentioned.” 

But it has failed.

To understand what CASA is and how it really works, I’d like you to imagine the following scene.

IF YOU'RE SEEING THIS ON THE NCCPR BLOG HOMEPAGE, PLEASE CLICK BELOW ON "READ MORE" TO SEE THE ENTIRE POST.

#CASAsoWhite: A big, new study reveals CASA’S biggest #fail yet

  

KEY POINTS

A huge, new study of Court-Appointed Special Advocates is out.  It was commissioned – and paid for – by a state CASA program.  It claims to have fixed the alleged methodological failings in other studies.  The results, straight from the study:

 “Overall, children appointed a CASA have significantly LOWER odds than children without a CASA of achieving permanency.” [Emphasis added]

 Compared to children not burdened with a CASA on the case, foster children with CASAs were:

 ● Less likely to be reunified with their own parents.

 ● Less likely to find permanence in the form of guardianship by a relative.

 ● More likely to “age out” of foster care with no home at all.

 ● The results are NOT due to the fact that CASAs are said to be assigned to “the toughest cases.” The researchers took extraordinary steps to account for that.

 The findings are disturbingly similar to a devastating 2004 study of the program. If anything, the new findings are even worse.

Back in 2004, Youth Today revealed the results of the most comprehensive study done to that point concerning the most sacred cow in child welfare: Court-Appointed Special Advocates.

CASAs are overwhelmingly white overwhelmingly middle-class amateurs sent into the homes of people who are overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately of color.  The amateurs then tell judges what decisions to make and, to a frightening degree, the judges rubber-stamp the recommendations.  Though CASAs almost always mean well, their only real “qualification” typically is their white, middle-class status.  

What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, according to that 2004 study.  The study was commissioned by the National CASA Association itself, which thought it would show the world how successful the program is.  But it didn’t.  Instead, the study found that having a CASA assigned to a case prolonged the time children were trapped in foster care, and made it less likely that children would be placed with relatives instead of strangers – even though multiple studies have found kinship foster care to be far less harmful to children than what should properly be called stranger care.

The study also found that CASAs didn’t really spend that much time on their cases - an average of only 4.3 hours per month for white children – and only 2.67 hours per month for Black children.

CASA has an all-purpose excuse whenever a study doesn't find what CASA wants it to find:  Of course we got poorer results, they say, but that's only because we take on the toughest cases.  The findings, CASA claims, are due to "selection bias."  But the researchers who conducted the 2004 study took rigorous steps to avoid “selection bias” – that is, to be sure they adjusted for any differences in the circumstances of the children with and without CASAs.  Nevertheless, when the results didn’t go the way CASA wanted, National CASA blamed selection bias.  At the time, Youth Today concluded that National CASA’s efforts to spin the study “can border on duplicity.”

What National CASA did not do was commission another study.

But, 15 years later, Texas CASA did.

And it’s a Texas-size study.  The researchers looked at outcomes for 31,754 children, far larger than any previous study.  Not only did Texas CASA commission the study, they also paid for it – and they chose the group that would do the research.  The researchers go on at length about how they’re confident they dealt with the "selection bias." problem. So no, the results are not because the CASAs dealt with tougher cases.

And those results are even worse than the results from the 2004 study.

Delaying “permanency”

If their own writing is to be believed, the Holy Grail for those wedded to a take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare, is “permanence” – or, as they call it “permanency,” presumably because adding an extra syllable makes them feel more important.

There are actually good reasons for this. Part of the reason foster care is so inherently harmful is because it is impermanent. Children are first traumatized by being taken from everyone they know and love and then traumatized over and over as they are moved from foster home to foster home, sometimes emerging years later unable to love or trust anyone.

But there are many ways to achieve permanency. The best, of course, is not to tear children needlessly from their parents in the first place.  Second best is swift reunification.  Third best is allowing the child to live in the permanent custody of a relative instead of a stranger.  Fourth on the list is adoption by strangers.  That option has an honorable place in child welfare. Sometimes it is, indeed, the best option.

But when latter-day “child savers” (to use the term their 19^th Century counterparts proudly gave themselves) talk “permanency” they’re typically not interested in the first three – they want to jump to option 4: adoption by total strangers; people with whom the child savers can identify because they are more likely to be of the same race and class.

But officially their standard of success is “permanency” – period.

As the Texas study notes:

The CASA program was designed to help children in foster care, and one way the program believes it accomplishes this goal is by getting children into safe, stable, permanent placements.” [Emphasis added.]

So here’s the stunning finding from the massive Texas study: If a child has a CASA, her or his odds of achieving permanency are significantly reduced. 

It should come as no surprise that children with a CASA are 16 percent less likely to be reunified with their own parents. The racial and class bias that prompted one law review article to call CASA an “exercise of white supremacy” ensures this.

But the Texas study found that a child with a CASA is 20 percent less likely to find permanency in any form – and more likely to wind up with the worst outcome of all: “aging out” of the system with no ties to their own family and no permanent home with anyone else either.

Among those who do find “permanency,” children with a CASA are less likely to find that permanency with a relative, and more likely to find it with a total stranger through adoption. 

The researchers acknowledge that their study is not an outlier, writing: “Our findings largely confirm the conclusions of prior research on CASA.”

The spin: Maybe permanency isn’t that important after all

As was the case in 2004, the dismal findings from the new study did not seem to please the study’s authors.  So they came up with all sorts of ways to spin those findings.

First, of course, they speculated that the lower rates of permanency might be because, with all that time to investigate, CASAs may have concluded that “a given placement is not a safe, stable, permanent option.”  But the study itself doesn’t measure whether any such conclusions are accurate.  The 2004 study found, however, that when CASAs prolonged children’s time in foster care and reduced the chances they would be placed with relatives this did nothing to improve child safety. (It also found, of course, that CASAs aren’t really spending all that much time on their cases.)

Then the authors of the new study seem to suggest that permanence may not be all it’s cracked up to be. They write:

While traditionally legal permanency has been the primary focus of the child welfare system there has been a recent shift by some toward a focus on wellbeing and social support outside of permanent placement.  

The “some” in question seems to be the Texas CASA program itself, since the only support cited for this claim is a promotional publication from Texas CASA.  But if that's really what the researchers and/or Texas CASA believe you have to wonder: Why did they go to all this trouble to do a massive study of legal permanency outcomes if legal permanency isn’t really that important?

Then the researchers take it a step further, seeming to suggest that aging out might not be so bad.  They write:

 Youth who are likely to age out of the child welfare system receive services to help prepare them for adult living and additional services after aging out of care, some of which are not provided to those youth who reach a permanent outcome before age eighteen.

Leaving aside the fact that the description of help to youth who age out is overly optimistic, this offers a wonderful insight into the mindset of the child welfare establishment. They seem to be saying: Youth who age out get help that youth placed in permanent homes don’t, so maybe it’s o.k. to just let them age out. 

Quick: Can anyone think of a better way to fix this disparity?

Only toward the very end do the authors’ ever-so-gently raise the most likely reason for these awful results:

Another limitation of the present study is the lack of demographic information available about the CASA volunteers. CASAs’ age, experience, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background could influence their activities or their interpretation of what is in the best interest of a child. Without access to this information, we are unable to explore the influence of CASA characteristics.

First of all, this begs the question: Why didn’t they have access to this information?

More generally, we do know this information. Nationwide, according to National CASA’s own data, 84.4 percent of volunteers are white and only 19 percent are African-American or Hispanic/Latino.  (Among foster children only 44 percent are white and 44 percent are African-American or Hispanic/Latino). Things can get so ludicrous that the scandal-plagued program in Snohomish County, Washington, which has no actual Black CASA volunteers, used a stock photo from National CASA to portray one.

As for income, that can be reasonably inferred from the simple fact that you have to have enough time and money on your hands to be able to volunteer.

We can also get a sense of the outlook of CASA concerning issues of race and class by things like:

● The CASA chapter that held a fundraiser featuring a blackface act.

● The CASA chapter that fell apart over a simple request to try to become more diverse.

● The former CASA volunteer whose rants about the families he investigated read like a Donald Trump tweetstorm.

● The whole wretched mess in Snohomish County.

Links to details about all of the above can be found here.

The limits of CASA

None of this means that no child ever has been helped by having a CASA volunteer.  But the study findings indicate that children are more likely to be harmed than helped.  If a medicine were found to be more likely to make patients sicker instead of better, we know what would happen: It would be pulled off the market.

CASA might have a useful role to play in child welfare – if it were converted into strictly a mentoring program for foster children, without allowing these usually white, middle-class amateurs to tell judges where those children should grow up.

But in its current form, CASA should be pulled off the market.

It’s time for Congress, which helps to fund CASA, for the judges who appoint CASAs and for the well-meaning people in the programs themselves to stop.

Stop denying children the chance to live safely in their own homes.

Stop denying children the chance to live with their extended families.

Stop denying children permanency.