Ethical and Legal Issues

Ethical and Legal Issues

The Court Appointed Special Advocate program (CASA) has been touted as one way of: preventing abused and neglected children from becoming lost in the child welfare system. As, this nonprofit organization is focused on finding volunteers, who are appointed by judges to: watch over specific child abuse and neglect cases. Their job is to serve as the adult in the child's life; that will look out for their best interests. This will continue until the child is placed into a suitable home that is permanent. Once this occurs, the job of the CASA volunteer will end and they will be assigned another case. ("About Us," 2011) This is important, because this system has been shown to be: effective at protecting children and preventing them from going into numerous foster homes. Evidence of this can be seen with a study that was conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice. They found that in those cases where children have a CASA volunteer, they were less likely to go from one foster home to the next. As, the number of children who end up having some kind of problems at their foster homes is: 13.3% (under this program), in comparison with 27.0% of children who have no volunteer. ("Office of the Inspector General Report," 2011) This is significant, because it shows how this program is having a positive impact in: reducing the number of children who bounce around among the different foster homes. However, despite these positive benefits, there are a number of different ethical issues that could affect the program. To fully understand how to deal with these challenges requires: looking at two of them and how they can be addressed. Once this takes place, it will provide the greatest insights as to how the CASA program can overcome the ethical issues their volunteers will face.

Two ethical challenges that CASA volunteers will continue to wrestle with include: becoming too emotionally attached to cases and not following up as much as they should. Becoming too emotionally attached to cases is when: many volunteers will want to ensure that the best outcome will always occur (for the children that they are working with). This is unattainable, due to the fact that there will be a certain percentage of children, who will remain in the system over the long-term. For many volunteers, this can be problematic, as they will feel a certain amount of empathy for the child. While there is nothing wrong with this, it can cause many case workers to become too attached. Once this happens, it means that they will be less effective in helping the child.

Not following up like they should be; can take place when volunteers could become overwhelmed with their cases. This can be problematic, as it will mean that a number of children will be neglected, despite the fact that they have been assigned a CASA volunteer. Over the course of time, this will reduce the effectiveness of the program in the select areas. As, there is no way to: determine if the actions of the volunteer are contributing to other issues.