It’s my pleasure to share some of CASA of the Pikes Peak Region’s accomplishments and highlights from 2011 and to extend my thanks to volunteers, board members, donors, staff and friends for helping us end the year strong.

Accomplishments At a Glance:

• CASA served 995 children last year, over 7,000 children through all five of our programs since our inception.
• CASA’s children found stability and permanency with 91% experiencing less than two moves in foster care and the average CASA case lasting less than 12.5 months.
• Just as we have for the past 22 years, CASA received a clean and exemplary financial audit.
• 84 cents of every dollar donated went directly to programs.
• 98.9% compliance rate for the National CASA Quality Assurance Process (85% was the national benchmark).
• CASA of the Pikes Peak Region is a model program in the state of Colorado and nationwide for CASA advocacy services and we often train other agencies.
• In October 2011, CASA of the Pikes Peak Region was selected as the Best Local Nonprofit by the readers of the Colorado Springs Independent.

Early intervention helps outcomes for kids

The 4th Judicial District Court unanimously approved CASA’s proposal to “frontload” and expedite the flow of abuse and neglect cases coming in to CASA. We now have the ability to screen and quickly assign cases to volunteer advocates at the earliest stage. The end result is that children have a CASA voice much sooner than before.

Permanency is more than a place, it is a sense of belonging

CASA of the Pikes Peak Region launched a new endeavor in 2011, the Lifelong Links Project, to find and engage extended family to help support children served by CASA. The Lifelong Links team is a group of experienced CASA volunteers who have been trained as search specialists to locate, connect and engage family and other important people for the purpose of creating a network of support for a child in the welfare system. Sometimes the searches will result in a permanent placement, other times it will build a team of caring connections to provide unconditional commitment and enduring stability for a child. CASA volunteers have the unique ability to spend the time and energy it takes to search nationwide and foster these connections for kids. In many instances CASA has been successful in finding family simply because nobody ever looked before.

Adapting to evolving learning styles

CASA of the Pikes Peak Region was one of nine CASA programs in the country selected to pilot the new Blended Learning volunteer training model. Blended Learning provides a more flexible delivery with half the training facilitated online and half completed in the classroom. A large portion of the training is based on case study. The pilot training, held in August, and was enthusiastically embraced by the new volunteers who took part. As we move into 2012, this flexible training option will provide busy people an new opportunity to volunteer. Based on the pilot programs’ feedback, National CASA will roll out this training model to all programs in 2012. We were honored to be a test site and look forward to offering it again in the new year. In addition, enhanced training curriculums were developed for volunteers in the Domestic Relations and Supervised Exchange and Parenting Time programs; this interactive approach is more engaging and appealing to adult learners.

Community Collaboration

CASA facilitated the collaborative efforts of 19 local nonprofits who joined together to promote philanthropy through the Colorado Gives Day campaign. This innovative marketing effort lead to a four-fold increase in giving to nonprofits in the Pikes Peak region during the campaign. The focus was to promote online giving and to engage new and younger donors. We believe the future holds many opportunities to grow this effort even further.

We look forward to a strong, productive 2012, continuing the vigilant fight to bring positive change to the lives of our community’s most vulnerable children.

Trudy Strewler Hodges

Executive Director, CASA of the Pikes Peak Region

 

The Gay & Lesbian Fund’s announcement of the closing of operations in Colorado Springs has shaken local nonprofits and foundations. Since their opening in 1996, the Gay & Lesbian Fund has become a highly respected change agent in this community.

I can’t help but reflect back on their arrival in Colorado Springs fifteen years ago; nonprofit leaders were skeptical at best. At the time, CASA’s board was reticent and questioning and it took us a number of years before we were comfortable enough to write a grant to the Gay & Lesbian Fund. But once engaged with the amazing people who work at G&L, we learned, we changed, and we benefited is many ways:

• First and foremost our social consciousness shifted. G&L helped us to stretch our thinking and become more inclusive in our work with clients.

• We received valuable training around fund development and benefitted from one-on-one support and guidance.

• We were taught how to leverage G&L funding to seek new donors and increased gifts.

• G&L’s voice led to innovations in creative capacity building.

• Most importantly, they brought heart and compassion to this community for all people, moving many of us from a place of skepticism about gay, lesbian, transgendered folks to one of acceptance and inclusion.

G&L came here against huge odds and barriers and leave Colorado Springs after making great strides in the advancement of equality and civility.

We celebrate you and will miss your presence in our community.

Trudy Strewler Hodges
Executive Director, CASA of the Pikes Peak Region

Our community is emerging from a period in which the recession caused us to lose our vitality and vision. With a new City Council, Mayor and County Commissioners, new corporate interest and visioning for our community, I sense a renewal of hope.

As our leaders and citizens further the vision of a healthy, vibrant community, I challenge us all to embrace one vital component to the quality of life we hold dear in Colorado Springs: the safety and well-being of our children.

Thus far this year, five children in our community have died due to child abuse. In the past, we who work in the field of child abuse prevention might see as many child deaths in an entire year, not in just a few months.

A healthy and economically strong community must have as its foundational principle the health and welfare of our children. How can we tell the story of a great community for new businesses and tourism if we cannot keep our children safe?

Masai warriors determine the health and well-being of their tribes by greeting one another with the simple question, “How are the children?”

Should we do any less?

Author Lillian Kats wrote: “Each of us must come to care about everyone else’s children. We must recognize that the welfare of our children and grandchildren is intimately linked to the welfare of all other people’s children. After all, when one of our children needs a life-saving surgery, someone else’s child will perform it. If one of our children is threatened or harmed by violence, someone else’s child will be responsible for the violent act. Life for our own children can be secured only if a good life is also secured for all other people’s children.” Yes, we are inextricably linked to all the children of this community.

We have a fundamental obligation to nurture and protect all our community’s children. They have the right to grow up in a community that holds high their rights, dignity and value! Our new leadership in the city and county can set their intentions on the stewardship of child protection assuring safe passage into adulthood.

The challenge I put forward to the new city and county leaders is for the health and well-being of all our children to become a core principle of your efforts to create a vibrant community. In every project we work on to better our community, we must always ask, “How are the children?”

CASA’s work every day for the safety of children and I, as their executive director, ask that as elected leaders you would contact me about how we all can work together for a better community for children.

“THESE ARE ALL OUR CHILDREN. WE WILL ALL PROFIT BY, OR PAY FOR WHATEVER THEY BECOME.” James Baldwin

Trudy Strewler Hodges

Executive Director, CASA of the Pikes Peak Region

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. This is a time for us to rally as individuals and as a community around the rights of children.

I’ve always been struck by other societies, like the Masai in Kenya and Tanzania who measure the well-being of the entire tribe by how well the children are doing. “All the children are well” means that life is good. It means that the daily struggles of existence do not preclude proper caring for the young.

Rev. Dr. Hilary Barrett explained this well in a 2009 meditation:

“When adults from different villages encounter one another on the African plains, it is traditional for them to exchange a greeting by asking one question: ‘How are the children?’ But when the Masai people ask one another “How are the children?” they are not really asking how are your children, the ones in your own biological family — your children alone. The questioner wants to know how the children of the whole village fare.

“And just as the question is standard, so is the answer. Even warriors with no children of their own always give the traditional answer: ‘All the children are well,’ meaning…that peace and safety prevail, that the priorities of protecting the young [and] the powerless are in place; that Masai society has not forgotten its reason for being, its proper functions and responsibilities. This traditional greeting among the Masai acknowledges the high value that the Masai place on their children’s well-being.”

Those of us in the United Sates could learn from the Masai’s values. When evaluating the state of our communities and our county we should look at the safety and well-being of our own children. When doing so, we will see we have a long way to go. We should be investing in children’s welfare on the front end, rather than spending exorbitantly on delinquency and prisons on the tail end.

During the month of April, and for all time, we owe it to our children and our children’s children to lift them high, to ensure that the U.S., and specifcally Colorado Springs, is the best place in the world to be a child and to provide them with safe passage into adulthood.

Trudy Strewler Hodges

Director, CASA of the Pikes Peak Region

I had the opportunity to watch the President’s State of the Union speech, as I hope many of you did.

President Obama mentioned children numerous times during the speech. At one point he shared a story of the impact teachers have on children’s lives and I was touched to see that teachers received one of the bipartisan standing ovations.

I agree that teachers have the greatest impact on children’s lives–after parents. But for children growing up in the foster care system, who will be their inspiration? Who is going to show them that they are loved, that they are special, that they can make it not just in school, but in life?

I echo the sentiments of Michael Piraino, Director of the National CASA Association who said: “Beyond the obvious need for a strong education, a child needs a strong home. Children don’t just need the love of learning; they need to learn about love itself. And it’s in the home that a child receives that support and nurturing. Every child needs that, particularly those children who have experienced abuse and neglect and who are still searching for a safe, permanent home.”

The well-being of our nation starts with our children. The work of CASA volunteers is transformational for children… and for us all.

Trudy Strewler Hodges
Executive Director, CASA of the Pikes Peak Region

One of the happiest things I do all year as CASA director is to meet with two groups of very special people: the Sage Council and the Advisory Council. Our Sage Council is made of long-term, veteran volunteers and our Advisory Council is comprised of former board members, volunteers and other seasoned supporters.

All participants have been involved for many years, in some cases since our agency’s inception 21 years ago. We draw on their wisdom, guidance and creativity to further strengthen our organization. For me personally, it warms my heart to be around long-time friends who remember the way things were in the beginning, who have helped us through challenging times, and who share the joy of our growth and accomplishments. It overwhelms me that they’ve remained so deeply committed for so long.

At times my role as executive director can be a lonely job, but meeting with these long-time friends helps me feel connected and energized. It’s a wonderful gift that fuels me for the ongoing fight against child abuse and neglect in our community.

See List of Advisory Council and Sage Council members

Trudy Strewler Hodges
Executive Director, CASA of the Pikes Peak Region

Photographer Dewitt Jones uses stories from his years with National Geographic to teach creativity and vision. His words and images inspire us to “Celebrate What’s Right With the World.”

At our staff retreat this week we watched one of Dewitt’s training videos and had a discussion about his concepts applied to our work at CASA.

There is nothing “right” about child abuse and it’s a hard reality that so many children in El Paso and Teller counties face enormous difficulty; their circumstances often bleak and sad. But as Dewitt teaches, times of greatest challenge or change always hold the most potential. We must learn to view the challenge from the right perspective in order to have chance of finding a creative solution.

This is what CASA volunteers do every day. Hundreds of dedicated citizens in Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak region are finding new possibilities and creating potential for kids who otherwise had little hope for a bright future. Thanks to the tenacity, creativity and dedication of these volunteers, children are leading healthier, happier lives in safe, permanent homes…this is what’s right with the world.

Trudy Strewler Hodges 
Executive Director, CASA of the Pikes Peak Region

 CASA’s college interns are an absolute joy to have around. These intelligent and energetic kids are of great value – they bring a youthful perspective to our organization and help us complete projects we would never be able to with our limited staff.

We get a great deal out of their services and we are priviledged to have them in our lives for a few months each summer, but I also believe the interns benefit as well. It is not only great on-the-job experience, working at a social services agency like CASA helps these young people develop an emotional intelligence that helps guide them into adulthood.

This week we received a copy of the paper Notre Dame intern, Stephanie Lee wrote about her experiences as a facilitator in CASA’s Supervised Exchange and Parenting Time (SEPT) Program. Below is a brief excerpt; it is quite profound.

When I began (the CASA internship), I knew on an intellectual level that the clients I would be working for would not have had the same experiences as the people I am surrounded by in my suburban neighborhood at home and in Notre Dame’s community. Many of the difficulties that CASA’s clients experience are unfamiliar to me, and so I was quick to judge the parents I saw as blameworthy and somehow lesser than I and the other law-abiding program facilitators were.

I have come to realize how reprehensible that line of thinking is, and how it conflicts with the spirit of service. To serve a group of people demands first that we are willing to give of ourselves without bias, and that we respect those whom we are helping. Deciding to participate in a program like SEPT without first resolving to keep an open heart would be the worst kind of hypocrisy, and I am grateful that I grasped how narrow-minded I was being early on. I know how destructive concealed—maybe even unconscious—prejudices can be, and I hope that SEPT clients, and people like them, feel that they can forge a rewarding new existence despite society’s strictures. I, for one, am determined that my mind will stay open and I will stop seeking to assign blame. I trust that someday, that will be true of the entire world.

Read Stephanie’s paper: Unblocking a Biased Heart

Trudy Strewler Hodges

Executive Director, CASA of the Pikes Peak Region

Children should not be caught in the middle of parental disputes and certainly should not be a witness to domestic violence. This is the reason CASA of the Pikes Peak Region began administering the Supervised Exchange and Parenting Time (SEPT) program in Colorado Springs.

The SEPT Program is a court-ordered service that protects children from witnessing parental disputes. Our SEPT program volunteers oversee the transfer of children from one parent to another in conflictive custody or domestic violence cases. Parents ordered into supervised parenting time are able to spend time with their children in a setting managed by CASA staff and volunteers. The program is a family-focused service that provides a place for parents and children to build positive relationships.

This week we learned our SEPT staff was chosen to receive specialized training through a grant from the Office Of Violence Against Women. This is a huge honor as over 100 supervised visitation programs applied from across the nation and only TEN sites were selected. Our key staff and partner agency staff will be flown to Boston in September to be fully trained in the area of creating intentional relationships with fathers on domestic violence cases. This focus on parental responsibility will help decrease future violence and strengthen father-child relationships.

The Family Violence Prevention Fund will present this training…coincidentally, my daughter is the National Trainer and Coordinator for the Family Violence Prevention Fund. How wonderful it will be to collaborate with her on such important work. The interweavings of our lives are remarkable to me, and I’m proud and humbled that she has also has a heart for these human needs! I am also so very proud of our team!!!

Trudy Strewler Hodges

Executive Director, CASA of the Pikes Peak Region

www.casappr.org

I had such fun this past week doing staff reviews. It brought me so much joy to see staff engaged and happy in their work, even though their jobs at CASA can be very emotional and difficult. Nearly everyone I reviewed told me, in one way or another, how much they love working here. I set out to praise them and celebrate their good work, but I was the one that was rewarded. What a wonderful surprise. It’s like the Voltaire quote: “Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”

I have a few direct-reports, but most of our staff is supervised by someone other than myself. This week I realized how important it is for me to spend one-on-one time with every employee and participate in all annual reviews.

Lesson learned: That as I take the time to recognize each employee’s contributions and accomplishments, large or small and be generous with praise, it is rewarding to all.

Trudy Strewler Hodges