CASA Sees Signs Of Recovery From Pandemic

By Gordon Hopkins Sheena Halverstadt, the Program Coordinator for Southeast Nebraska CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) spoke at a meeting of the Jefferson County Commissioners on Tuesday, September 27, 2022, to give an update on how CASA is functioning as the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic begins to finally subside. CASA is a network of 21 local programs in Nebraska serving 52 counties. Southeast Nebraska CASA covers Jefferson, Saline, Thayer, and Seward counties. Halverstadt was hired in April of this year, just as the pandemic was beginning to have a serious impact on many such programs throughout the state and the country. CASA recruits, screens, trains and supports volunteers to act as advocates for children. Restrictions required by COVID-19 have hampered recruitment. Halverstadt told commissioners that CASA is seeing improvements, including an uptick in volunteers, “We’re doing well. We have three new volunteers that are in training right now, two in Jefferson, one in Thayer.” Halverstadt added, “That will put us up to more volunteers in Thayer than children for the first time. And then we are right on par with Jefferson to have just enough volunteers for the children that we serve for now.” Halverstadt explained the importance of the volunteers, “The volunteer sees the children more often than anybody else on the case; more so than their caseworker, more so than the guardian ad litem, which is their attorney. So, we do get to see them a little bit more on a normal day-to-day basis to see what things are like. So, there are things that we see that others might not and that we can bring to the table and say we need to look at this, or we need resources for this.” “Honestly, a lot of our kids are in that 11-to-18 range. We see a lot of those. We see a lot of the two-and three-year-olds, but a lot of them right now are teenage youth that has been in for a while. And so, we’re trying to help them find some sort of permanency”.Sheena Halverstadt As October begins, CASA has another project to focus on, as Halverstadt explained, “We are working with two organizations in Seward (County). For the last two years, they have provided it for us. And this year, they’re going to do it again. We get a list of all the children, even the ones that don’t have a volunteer in our four counties, and they provide Christmas presents for all four of our counties for all the kiddos.”Halverstadt said, “And then they have people that volunteer to go out and purchase the gifts. And then we get them all wrapped up and we get to deliver them to the kids, which is really fun. So that’s our next kind of big project right now.” Commissioner Mark Schoenrock told Halverstadt, “Well, we’re very grateful we have you.”

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