Welcome to CASA of Lane County, Oregon

A Safe, permanent home
Isn’t something a child
Should only dream about.

Almost a half million children in the United States live in foster care. The numbers in Lane County hover in the neighborhood of five hundred. These children are victims of abuse or neglect. Most are very young. Through no fault of their own, they have been thrown into an overburdened child welfare system made up of social workers, attorneys and judges. Theirs is a childhood filled with fear and uncertainty.

Once involved in the courts, abused and neglected children often languish in foster care, sometimes for years, while awaiting decisions to be made about their futures. Many of these children are split apart from their siblings, other family members and childhood friends. They frequently develop social attachment difficulties that plague them through adulthood. Their monsters die hard.

In 1976, Judge David Soukup in Seattle, Washington conceived an idea. In a n effort to gain more information regarding the children whose lives he was making decisions about, he began the first CASA program. Community volunteers were trained and appointed by the court to speak up for the best interest of a child. There are currently 900 CASA programs nationwide. 50,000 are now serving over 200,000 abuse and neglected children. It is still, however, not enough. Over 75% of the children in need of a CASA volunteer do not have one. You could be one of those special people who can provide a child a voice in court. You could make a difference…

Our Goals

The mission of CASA of Lane County is to vigorously pursue the best interest of children in the Juvenile court system and to provide abused, neglected, and vulnerable children a voice in court, through trained and committed community volunteers who advocated for their safety and stability.” CASA of Lane County accomplishes this mission by training and supporting citizen volunteers who serve as advocates for individual children.

Our Goals are:

To assure safe, permanent and nurturing homes for children.
To identify the child’s needs and to recommend services addressing those needs.
To provide the court with well-researched and thorough information thus allowing the court to make informed decisions about the child.
To provide continuity to the child’s case.
To educate the community and to help create awareness regarding the issues of child abuse and the juvenile dependency process.

CASA Supporters

CASA programs work, as demonstrated by numerous evaluations and scores of endorsements:

A Sample of Endorsements

U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect
National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges
American Bar Association
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of the U.S
Department of Justice

A Sample of Studies

Abramson – 1991
Oregon Task Force Project – 1994
Smith – 1992
Wert, Fein & Haller – 1986
Litzelfelner – 1997


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