Mark Rushing

Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Central Virginia is a nonprofit organization that recruits, trains, and supports volunteers who advocate for children who have been abused and neglected. A CASA volunteer is a citizen who wants to help children in a dramatic way. It is no ordinary volunteer job. Our volunteers receive intensive screening and in-depth training about abused children and how to speak for them. CASAs are appointed by the court and are assigned to a child until that child is in a safe, permanent home. A CASA finds out everything about the child and is supervised by a staff member who guides the work and offers that human partnership needed in this emotionally gripping work. Armed with facts and the child's own words, the CASA is able to give an informed recommendation, and the child's own voice, to our Judges. We don't have much time to help some of these children, but we do have some solutions. The sooner abused and neglected children are put into a safe, permanent home - whether an adoptive home or a return to their parents when it is safe to do so - the better the chances for the child to heal and not to replicate the harm on someone else. In this way, CASA helps stop the cycle of child abuse. CASA volunteers can't stop poverty or addiction and - saddest of all - they can't stop parents from abusing a child. But they do give the abused and neglected child hope for a better future, one with no beatings, no neglect, no mean words. CASA of Central Virginia needs partners across the state who will add their voices to ours by supporting our work. We invite you to join us. The children – each valued as our own - are waiting.