Child advocacy group sees upswing in volunteers working with foster children
The 730 kids in Oakland County’s foster care system are seeing more helping hands these days, even amidst a global pandemic.
CARE House of Oakland County has experienced an uptick in interested volunteers, 30 alone in the last month, who will join 56 other court appointed special advocates. The volunteers work with abused or neglected children and families in the foster care system. CARE House partners with the national Court Appointed Special Advocates organization to train them over eight weeks.
On average, cases where a child is appointed to work with a special advocate move through the court system seven-months faster, according to the nonprofit.
“When you’re in a situation like a pandemic, people begin to wonder what their purpose is and how they can help the greater good,” Brenda Baker-Mbacke, director of the CASA program at CARE House, said. “People I think gravitate to us because this is an extremely fulfilling volunteer opportunity where you can make a tangible difference.”
CARE House provided more than 2,000 hours of volunteer advocacy for kids in the foster care system last year. Those hours will look much different this year as advocates move to texting, video chatting and letter writing to communicate with their appointed children.
It’s their biggest challenge, Baker-Mbacke said, not being able to see the kids face-to-face.
“We’ve had to get creative. We’re finding ways to maintain contact and that’s what’s most important,” she said. “But there’s also a number of issues that become magnified in a pandemic. We know there are situations occurring out there and people don’t know who to turn to if the child or parent is in an abusive setting.”
How the volunteers are advocating for their children is also changing. Their needs look much different now than they did a month ago. One volunteer recently helped a family with four children acquire as many laptops from their school district for virtual learning.
“We have to start defining what our new normal will be. We’re ready to embrace it and make it work for these families,” BakerMbacke said.