Blog & Events

Monroe County CASA Wins National Contest for Recruitment Poster Design Bloomington, IN – Monroe County CASA learned recently that it has won a national award for designing a volunteer recruitment poster. The poster featur es a small boy with the headline “Stand up for abused children, so they can stand a chance”. Monroe County CASA will be awarded a small monetary award and the chance to win at the People’s Choice judging at the annual CASA conference. A win at the Pe ople’s Choice judging would award Monroe County CASA a free consultation with a Public Relations agency. The award ...

Are Indiana’s funding cuts hurting state’s abused and neglected children? Some who work with kids say cuts are having an impact; state says services still available By Dann Denny Lorraine Merriman, a Court Appointed Special Advocate for 13 years(left) Kristin Bishay, director of Monroe County Court Appointed Special Advocates(right) Not long ago, the Monroe County Department of Child Services persuaded the Juvenile Court to remove several abused children from their home and put them into foster care. A few months later, a DCS caseworker got the court to close the case and return the children to their home. “Just four ...

Advocates for children worry about steady decline in funding State now has control over money that had been distributed by county By Dann Denny Judge Steve Galvin A steady drop in funding to the Indiana Family and Children Fund has some child advocates saying that children in crisis are receiving fewer services. The state’s appropriation to the Indiana Family and Children Fund – which pays for placements and services for abused and neglected children and juvenile delinquents – was $445 million in fiscal year 2011. The recommended appropriation in fiscal year 2012 is $336 million, a 25 percent ...

“There are children alive today because the CASAs did their job and did it well,” he said. It’s the belief of many in the juvenile justice system that Court Appointed Special Advocates not only help abused and neglected children, but society as a whole. “CASA’s involvement in a case brings better outcomes for children without significant additional public costs,” said Kristin Bishay, director of Monroe County CASA. “And taking services away from these families will create a far greater cost in the future, not just in terms of the dollars and cents but the harm that is caused to children.” ...

CASA in need of more volunteers By Dann Denny The Monroe County Court Appointed Special Advocates board launched a volunteer recruitment campaign two months ago, hoping to raise the number of CASA volunteers from 96 to 111 by March 1 and to 146 by the end of the year. The campaign, which ran from Jan. 19 to Feb. 18 and included everything from group presentations to TV ads, fell a bit shy of that goal, producing six new CASA volunteers. Those volunteers have begun taking a two-days-a-week, five-week training course March 1-April 15, a course that is offered three times ...

By Less Wadzinski February 7, 2012, last update: 2/7 @ 6:37 am This guest column was written by Les Wadzinski, a Court Appointed Special Advocate for Monroe County. Perhaps you read the H-T article (Jan. 23) titled “Report questions child safety agency’s work”. Or, perhaps you didn’t read it because it involved a topic most of us would rather avoid – children dying from neglect and abuse. The article summarized an Indianapolis Star report that was even more gut wrenching, complete with photos of 22 babies and toddlers along with the awful details of their deaths caused by their parent ...