(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to Journal.

I'm Steve Kendall.

For children who have suffered from abuse or neglect, they're the most vulnerable people in our society.

And one of the ways a group deals with this is to provide support for children who find themselves in that situation, is a group called Northwest Ohio CASA.

And we're fortunate today to have one of the representatives from that group here.

Desirae Eisenmen of Northwest Ohio CASA, which stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates.

So, Desirae, welcome to The Journal.

Thanks, for being here today.

- Thank you, thanks for having me.

- Yeah, for those folks who don't know a lot about what Northwest Ohio CASA is, could you talk a little about the background of the organization and just generally what it does.

And then we can talk in more detail about some of those other parts.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So like Steve said, CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates.

So, our organization recruits and trains community volunteers to advocate in court for children who have experienced abuse or neglect.

So we have volunteers who get to know these children and the people in their lives well enough to share what they believe is in the best interest of the child.

- Now, in terms of geography what areas would we be talking about for your particular group?

- Yeah, so CASA is a national organization so you'll find it across the nation.

Our particular organization, Northwest Ohio CASA, serves Henry County, Defiance County, Williams County, and Paulding Counties.

- Ah, okay.

And you talked a little bit about the fact, I know in the intro I talked a little bit about the main purpose, when people are involved in this program, for instance if I'm a volunteer I'm one of the folks who's being an advocate working with the children in this situation, what kind of things do I have to know or what's the process for me to become a volunteer and get involved in the organization?

- Yeah, one of our most frequent questions is, do I have to have a background, like a legal background?

Do I have to know anything about the legal system?

And you do not.

So to become a volunteer we will ask for you to fill out a pretty extensive application.

We also do a one on one interview, we do a background check.

And then if you make it to that point we feel like an individual would be a good fit for our organization we will have them join our pre-service training.

Which is a 30 hour training, we're currently doing those all virtually.

But that will provide the future volunteer with all of the information necessary that they need to know in order work these cases.

And they'll do court observation and then our staff is just there to support them throughout the entirety of the cases.

- Yeah, so there are resources then, so it isn't as if, as you said, you don't have to have a degree in anything specific to this particular area.

And there are resources then available so if a question comes up, you've got someone as a volunteer, you can tap that resource and find, "Okay, I'm in this situation, what should I do?"

And hopefully your training carries a lot of that as well.

- Yes, absolutely.

- When it comes to the timing, like so if today I said, "You know I'd like to sign up, get me into the training program."

Is that something you can do?

Is there a window for those like certain times of the year, so many times a year, you start the training program?

- We typically, kind of determine trainings based upon the need that we have in our counties.

And then also, the interest that we have.

So if we receive a lot of applications at once we will decide to do a training coming soon.

So we are planning on most likely having a training at the beginning of 2022.

So probably starting in January will be our next training.

- And you mentioned the number of, depending on the number of potential circumstances you have.

What typically, for instance like right now, what would be the, to call it anything the better, the caseload for CASA volunteers?

How many children are you working with right now?

- So we are currently serving in the Four County area, we are currently serving about 130 children.

- Wow, wow.

- And we have about 60 volunteers.

- Now, and I know that no case is similar to another one.

The volunteers, once they're involved in this and they've been assigned or they're linked up with a child in this situation, what is their responsibility?

What are the things then you expect them to do, and how much time does it take?

And I know that each case probably it's a variable how much time, maybe, they're involved in.

But typically what would it be like if I'm a volunteer and I'm in the program, what's required of me at that point in terms of time and effort, I guess?

- You know, we say it's somewhere in the range of maybe five to fifteen hours a month, depending on where we're at in the case.

So at the beginning of a case, it's going to be a little bit more time, a little bit more time will be required.

Because you need to get to know everyone involved and there will be a little bit more frequent court hearing.

So our volunteers are required to meet with the child or children, sometimes there's multiple children on a case.

They're required to meet with these children at least once a month, at minimum.

So that's our main requirement.

We are there for the for the children.

But additionally, they're also required to at some point, speak with parents, foster parents, teachers, doctors, therapists, anyone involved in the child's life to try to paint a picture of what's really going on, and provide their concerns, provide their recommendations to the judge on what may be in the best interest of this child.

- Now, and you've touched in some detail on this, if I'm a volunteer what would be the circumstance, what would be, I know there's nothing typical about each case as I've said before, what would be the things I would be dealing with as a volunteer?

So you mentioned going into court and watching those procedures, that sort of thing, being involved in those.

What would be some of the things I would be confronted with as a volunteer, when I'm now working with one of these children?

- Like you said, each and every one of our cases are so different.

But one of the pretty consistent things, unfortunately, that we see is drug use in the parents.

So that is one thing that a lot of our cases will involve.

Typically, by the time our CASAs are appointed to cases the parents are already starting to work towards reunifying with their children.

So we don't typically, you know we're not like the case workers that go into the really, really bad situations.

We're not removing the children from their homes.

By the time we are involved, they are in a safe environment.

Whether or not it's still with their parents or with a foster family, or with maybe a relative.

So at that point, you know, we're going in and we're kind of making sure that they're still safe throughout the duration of the case.

But like I said at that point typically the parents are doing everything that they can to try to reunify with their children.

But we do see some pretty scary things sometimes, we do have to observe parent's homes or go into potential homes for the children.

And sometimes they aren't what we believe are the best living circumstances.

But we teach our volunteers about working through some of those implicit biases and working through some of those feelings that may come up.

And knowing that maybe the way we grew up or the way that we lived isn't necessarily how everyone lives.

- Ah, Okay.

When we come back we can talk a little bit more about that, because I think our viewers would be interested in hearing more about that process.

Well first of all, we can talk about how children are brought into this process and then how your folks are able to interact.

Back in just a moment with Desiree Eisenmen from Northwest Ohio CASA, here on The Journal.

Thank you for staying with us here on The Journal.

Our guest is Desirae Eisenmen from Northwest Ohio CASA, and for those who don't know what CASA stands for, it's Court Appointed Special Advocates.

They work particularly with children who have been experiencing neglect or abuse in their living setting.

And Desiree, talk a little bit about how these children come in to a program that then your group provides support for and becomes involved in.

Where do these children come from, what are the circumstances, how do they come to the attention of an authority or some other group?

- Yeah, so that's one of the most frequent questions that we get.

When our phones ring it's typically a family member or even a parent that says, "My child or my grandchild needs a CASA volunteer."

Unfortunately, we cannot take referrals from anyone except from the judge.

- Right, okay.

- So, our volunteers are appointed directly from the judge and these are open abuse, neglect, or dependency cases.

So they must be involved in the child welfare system.

This is an open case and our referrals must come directly from the judge.

- So the resource people involved in the court say, "This would be a good possibility to become part of the CASA program, this is where we need someone to get involved."

At that point then, the case has been referred to you, what's the next step that you folks take and you review the case, obviously, but what does that entail before you actually assign it to a volunteer?

- Yeah, so we look at the details that we are provided with about the case.

The age of the child, maybe the circumstance, what got them involved in this case, and we try to link them up to a volunteer that we think would be a really good fit.

So some of our volunteers have been doing this for a really long time and they know that maybe they prefer to work with young children or some of them prefer to work with older children.

So we try to link them up with the volunteer that we think they will be able to really bond with.

- Yeah, and that makes- - And then, oh, sorry!

- No, go ahead.

- And then immediately, what they do is start working that case.

So from the minute that they receive the information and they receive their appointment from the judge they will call the case worker, they will get in touch with the family, they will try to schedule their first meeting with the child.

And it just, kind of from there, it just goes pretty quickly.

- And then you kind of, you anticipated another question, because I was thinking that certain volunteers would feel more comfortable, this is what they're good at, this is what I'm not good at, this is how I feel more comfortable with, and that probably comes out when you're doing the recruiting process, the training process, and all of that.

To say you know, where do you feel most comfortable?

Well, I'd like to deal with children on the younger end of the scale versus whatever.

So yeah, that's good to know.

Now, you talk about the number of volunteers, typically how long do volunteers work in the program?

Do you have people that have been doing it, obviously for years and years, but you're always looking for new people obviously, additional people.

- Yes, we are definitely always looking for new people.

We have, we just celebrated one of our volunteers who has been a volunteer for twenty years.

- Oh, wow.

- Which is pretty impressive.

- Admirable, yes.

- Yeah, yeah.

So, we have lots of volunteers who have been there for 5 plus years.

We also, we do see some turnover.

You know it's pretty hard work whether it's they get into it and it's a little bit too rough or you know life changes happen, maybe they move, or they have children of their own, or you know, health concerns.

So we do see some turnover because of those reasons as well.

But we have a lot of volunteers who have been doing this for a significant amount of time.

- Yeah, and it sounds like too that in terms of demographics, the age range and all of that is pretty broad.

It isn't all just people who may be retired or whatever it's across the spectrum then of the population that's out there that wants to do this.

- Absolutely, we have volunteers of every age, every walk of life, whether we have retired schoolteachers, or retired individuals, we have young professionals, we have stay at home moms, we have couples that work together on a team.

So we just, we see really, I think our youngest volunteer is 22 and I think that goes up to beyond 70, so.

- Wow, and the good thing about that is that it's that broad range of life experience that they bring to the program and to the children involved.

When you look at this do you get, sometimes, in terms of volunteers, does word of mouth work for you?

Where people have been in the program say, have a friend or a relative or some, "You know, you might be interested in doing this."

Do you get some of that where it, the people that are involved recruit other people for you possibly?

- Yeah, one of the questions that is on the application, among lots of other questions, but one of them is, "How did you hear about the program?"

And more times than not, it's typically through another CASA volunteer or through a friend who, you know, heard about the program because they know a CASA volunteer.

So that is definitely our biggest recruitment tool, is our current volunteers.

But we, you know, we believe that that's a really wonderful thing because if they're recruiting other volunteers, then you know that it is a very meaningful volunteer experience.

- Yeah, speaks to the success of the program that they believe it enough to, yeah, to talk to somebody else.

In terms of the ages of the children, what are we talking?

Everything from newborn to, what would be the oldest child you might be working with?

- Newborn to eighteen.

- Mm hmm, okay.

- On a very rare occasion they could be up to twenty-one, depending on the circumstances, they could still be considered a juvenile child.

Up to the age of twenty-one but typically we see that cut off at eighteen.

So zero to eighteen, typically.

- And if you looked at the, and I know that it's going to change on a regular basis, are you typically seeing younger children versus the older children, or?

I'm sure it just depends on what's happening at that particular point in time but I'm sure you, unfortunately, see children really young children, in difficult situations.

- Yeah and you know, I can't really say that we see one age group more than the other but we have, you know, even at this particular moment in time we have several newborns and we have several teenagers.

And everything in between.

We just see, really a little bit of everything.

- Okay, well when we come back I know that one of the things we haven't touched on yet, you have a lot of events that people can get involved in and of course a lot of ways for people to support the program besides becoming a volunteer.

So when we come back we can talk about some of those events and ways people can get involved besides being a volunteer with Northwest Ohio CASA.

Back in just a moment with Desirae Eisenmen, here on The Journal.

Thank you for staying with us on The Journal.

We're talking with Desirae Eisenmen, she's a representative of Northwest Ohio CASA, Court Appointed Special Advocates.

And we've talked about the program, and how people can get involved to a certain extent.

But the other thing you do is you hold events also to promote what CASA does and get people involved, and also to garner support because obviously, resources are needed for this.

So I know just recently you had your 5K earlier this month, talk a little about how that went and how those events typically go for you.

- Yeah, so Northwest Ohio CASA is a non-profit organization so in addition to the really important work that we're doing recruiting and training volunteers and supporting them, we also really need to do fundraising events as well so that we are able to continue recruiting and training those volunteers.

So, like Steve said, we just had our 5K at the beginning of the month, we actually partnered with another non-profit called The Children's Lantern, in Defiance, and they provide resources for foster care, individuals in foster care and their families.

So we serve a lot of the same children and families, and so we decided that we would make a great team.

We came together and it was a really, really, fun event.

It was an evening 5K, so we had lanterns, and glow sticks and you know, we had that at the Reservoir in Defiance.

It was a super hero theme and we had a free obstacle course for children that was really, really fun.

So we're hoping to bring that back next year because we had such a great time.

And you know, we're able to spread the word about both of our organizations.

- Yeah, and I know the next event because I was looking at your calendar, is something called, which obviously we're in the Halloween season, so it's called Witches Brew.

So talk a little bit about what that particular event is like and what people can know about that and enjoy that as well.

- Yeah, so this is probably our favorite event of the year.

We have two Witches Brews, we have one that's actually going to be, so this is airing on Thursday, it will be today, it's happening on Thursday.

Which is the Defiance Witches Brew for CASA and we partner with the Defiance Visitor's Bureau to do the Witch's Brew in Defiance.

And then the Symphony of Trees, in Henry County also has a Witch's Brew that will take place on October 23rd, downtown Napoleon.

So we have two opportunities to dress up like witches and support the downtown businesses and ultimately support Northwest Ohio CASA for the Defiance event and then for the Napoleon event.

It benefits three organizations, one of them being Northwest Ohio CASA.

The other two, it's the Center for Child and Family Advocacy, and the Henry County Hospital.

- Ah, so yeah, a lot of folks are going to benefit from that then as well.

You mentioned Northwest Ohio CASA does what's called The Symphony of Trees, which is a wonderful title, what is The Symphony of Trees?

- Yeah, so The Symphony of Trees is actually it's own separate non-profit.

They were created in 2000, the year 2000, after recognizing that there was a need for the children in our area.

So, they came together and they're made up of a wonderful group of board members and committee chairs, dozens of individuals who are caring and giving individuals.

And additionally, they request donations from so many different people, hundreds of donors, and because of that reason they are able to have this week-long series of events, which I can talk about briefly.

And ultimately, that money that they raise benefits our organization as well as those other two organizations that I mentioned earlier.

- Yeah, so what are are some of the parts of this?

You mentioned that there are some, a sequence of events or a sequence of activities that take place as part of this.

What are some of those?

- Yeah, so we have tons of really fun events with The Symphony of Trees, so it begins, other than the Witch's Brew, which will be on October 23rd, the main events will begin on November 11th, so the evening of November 11th there is a business after hours, these all take place at The Armory in Napoleon.

On November 12th in the evening, there will be a German-fest, so kind of like a fun casual event.

You know, you can dress up and just come have fun, there's dinner, and drinks, and dancing.

And then the morning of November 13th there is a tapestry of tables where lots of women host a table, they decorate them beautifully, dress up, and have a really nice lunch.

And then the evening of that same day, November 13th, is The Symphony of Trees Gala.

So dinner, dancing, lots of auctions, and things like that to try to raise money for our organizations.

And then the final event is that Sunday, which is a children's party.

So I believe this year it is a carnival theme, they invite children, it's a really, really fun, fun event.

- Wow, yeah sounds like a lot of activity and a lot of effort goes into it, for a really good series of causes.

If people wish to donate in other ways or support the program in other ways, what are some of the ways they can do that for Northwest Ohio CASA?

- Yeah, so we always say, you know, if you are unable to become a CASA volunteer, because we know that it's a pretty extensive volunteer role, it's not for everyone.

But if you want to still support our organization, or give back, you know, just come to our events.

Come to our fundraising events, just by doing that you're ultimately supporting our organization.

And regarding The Symphony of Trees, you're also supporting The Center for Child and Family Advocacy, and the Henry County Hospital.

Additionally, being a non-profit and also The Symphony of Trees being a non-profit, we never say no to donations either.

So The Symphony of Trees is looking for not only monetary donations but also like items to auction off at the event.

So whether those are big items or little items that they can put together in a basket, they're always looking for things like that.

Because ultimately, those donations are what are auctioned off and how our organizations really will be able to receive those proceeds.

- Now if someone wants to participate in that, wants to donate, wants to become involved in that way, what's the simplest way for them to find more information or get in touch with representatives from Northwest Ohio CASA and Symphony of Trees?

- Yeah, so if you have more questions about Northwest Ohio CASA, specifically, you can visit our website, which is NorthwestOhioCASA.com and then also we have an email which is just info@nwocasa.com If you have more interest about The Symphony of Trees, if you would like to donate or attend any of our events, purchase tickets for any of the events, you will visit symphonyoftrees.com Additionally, we both also have Facebook pages, Twitter pages, and Instagram pages that we typically will share all of the most up to date information there.

- Yeah, so no one should have any trouble finding you in any format, that's good to know.

Well, Desirae Eisenmen thank you so much for coming on, talking about Northwest Ohio CASA and all of the other events and things you're involved in.

Great, great program, and thank you to those people that volunteer and of course, the folks at Northwest Ohio CASA as well, all the resource people as well.

Great Service.

You can check us out at wvgu.org and of course you can watch us every Thursday at 8 pm on WBVGU PBS.

We'll see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

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