Be A Voice

Volunteers review training materials at the CASA Voices for Children office on Tuesday, June 26, 2018, at 937 Broadway in Cape Girardeau

Ben Matthews ~ bmatthews@semissourian.com

Be the Change

The first installment in TBY’s volunteer series

What to do with the time retirement brings?

One solution: find a cause or a group of people you are passionate about, and get involved.

According to the Mayo Clinic, there are six main benefits of volunteering: it decreases the risk of depression, gives a sense of purpose, helps volunteers stay physically and mentally active, reduces stress levels, increases life expectancy and helps develop new, enriching relationships.

Helping others, and helping yourself: sounds like a win-win.

The Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), a service of Senior Corps and a sponsored agency of Aging Matters, specializes in connecting people ages 55 and older with meaningful volunteer positions throughout Southeast Missouri. Their sister organization, Volunteer Intergenerational Center, pairs people ages 54 and younger with open volunteer positions in the community.

The organizations do this through maintaining a database of available volunteer opportunities throughout the region, posting new positions as they open. Registered volunteers receive emails or phone calls when volunteer positions matching their interests become available in the community.

With approximately 100 not-for-profits throughout Southeast Missouri with which RSVP and Volunteer Intergenerational Center work, volunteers are sure to find a way to put their skills to use, or to explore a new area of interest while donating time to make our community a better place.

“We help them discover volunteer positions until they find something they enjoy,” says Christy McClain, office assistant at RSVP and Volunteer Intergenerational Center. “We are a program helping people connect with other people.”

In this volunteer series spanning the next few issues of TBY, we will highlight causes throughout Southeast Missouri you can get involved in, to help build our region into the community you want it to be.

This month, we spotlight Voices for Children/CASA.

Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASAs) leave lasting impact on children’s lives

While she was in foster care, Kedeisha Merkler saw her two Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASAs) everyday. They often ate lunch with her and visited her at school. Both of them have thrown her birthday parties.

Now, as a working adult who is preparing to become a mother, she still keeps in touch with both of her CASAs, and considers them her biggest supports.

“It became a very good bond,” Merkler says of her and her CASAs’ relationships. “When you’re in foster care, you don’t have that bond with a mother. They become a big sister or a mother figure.”

Being a CASA

Rosalie Archer-Knehans has experienced this bond from the role of a mother figure.

Her longest case as a CASA went on for five years. In that time, she drove to various cities across the state of Missouri to meet each month with the child she represented in court, as he was moved from home to home. During these visits, they talked, listened to each other and did fun activities together, through the five homes the child was placed in and the four caseworkers who handled the case at various points.

Through it all, Archer-Knehans was a constant in his life.

“I came to love him like a family member,” she says. “You think about them, you try to give them guidance, you worry about them.”

Archer-Knehans has been a Court-Appointed Special Advocate for eight years, advocating for children in court in four separate cases. Although each case is different, the case she worked on for five years is an exception, the longest case Voices for Children/CASA has worked with in Southeast Missouri. She has also been the court-appointed advocate for the shortest case, which lasted a few months.

The Deficit

The need for CASAs in Southeast Missouri is great: there are currently 380 children in foster care in Perry, Bollinger and Cape Girardeau counties. Two-thirds of these children do not have court advocates.

Voices for Children/CASA hopes to change that.

“That’s the dream — that every case would have a CASA,” says Gina Brockmire, volunteer coordinator for Voices for Children/CASA. “So we need volunteers.”

The association recruits, trains and supports court-appointed advocates. CASAs investigate cases, speaking with the child and the adults in the child’s life, including their parents, foster parents, teachers and counselors, to ensure the most informed decision about a child’s permanent placement is made. In court, CASAs speak on behalf of the child and in the best interest of the child, working with a team of professionals from the Family Services Division until the case is closed to ensure this occurs. CASAs also spend time each month with the child and deliver services to the child and family, all while writing reports for the judge about their findings.

For the commitment of five to 10 hours per month, CASAs make a lasting impact on the life of children.

Saying Yes

Archer-Knehans’ story of becoming a CASA has a lot to do with timing and openness, a willingness to step up and say “Yes.” One day more than eight years ago, she was flipping through the channels on television when she came across Dr. Phil talking about CASA. Even though she never watched Dr. Phil, she kept the television on the channel and listened. She remembered one of her co-workers talking about his wife being a CASA; Dr. Phil filled in the gaps in her knowledge about the program.

“I was needing something outside of myself — I felt like I needed to contribute more,” Archer-Knehans says. “In our daily lives, we become so consumed with ourselves and our own families’ needs — I think it’s so important to reach out and be that for someone who doesn’t have that support.”

Archer-Knehans says she grew up in a loving home, and thought all families were like hers: happy. As she began to learn about child abuse and neglect in our society and in Southeast Missouri, she realized how deeply it affects children — and how lasting that impact can be.

“You become more aware that there’s a lot of hurt out there for our kids,” she says. “It makes you want to in some way help, be able to give the child some comfort and some hope.”

She realizes some people might have doubts about becoming a CASA.

“Anytime you start something new, you have those doubts,” Archer-Knehans says. “If you have the time to look without yourself to someone else, to do something that really helps others, this is something good to contemplate, to consider.”

Merkler agrees.

“There’s a lot of kids out there who could use a role model,” she says, “and there’s a lot of positive people out there who could be CASAs.”