Update 2:30 p.m. Feb. 20: This story has been updated to include a comment from Del. Katrina Callsen.
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Virginia’s Court Appointed Special Advocate program, commonly known as CASA, is seeking to boost its annual state funding from $1.6 million to $4 million as budget amendments are reviewed in Richmond.
CASA matches volunteers with children in the foster care system so they have a consistent source of support and a champion in the courtroom who can advocate for the resources and outcomes they need to thrive. Volunteers’ extra eyes and ears aid judicial decision-making and ease the burden on social workers, family attorneys and other experts in the child welfare system.
The budget request is crucial, CASA officials said, because the organization has not seen a state funding increase since 2008. Over that nearly 20-year period, cases have become more complex and demand for services has increased — and CASA programs are struggling to keep up.
In the 2024 fiscal year, Virginia’s 27 CASA programs served more than 3,200 children. In the same window, CASA was unable to serve more than 3,400 children who had been referred to the program due to volunteer and supervision gaps, according to a CASA fact sheet.
“Our small administrative team is working tirelessly to bridge those gaps, but it is not sustainable. Increased state investment would allow us to hire and retain experienced advocate managers, recruit significantly more volunteers, and offer year-round training so we can respond to children as soon as they are referred,” said Allison Stronza, executive director of the Lynchburg-based CASA of Central Virginia, in a statement to Cardinal News.
The requested budget amendment would increase CASA’s annual state funding by $2.4 million and is supported by Sens. Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover County; Barbara Favola, D-Arlington County; and Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County; and Dels. Katrina Callsen, D-Charlottesville; and Delores McQuinn, D-Richmond. Former Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, also supported the budget amendment before resigning Wednesday to take on a senior advisory role at the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority.
“We’re really proud of the fact that the budget has a number of patrons in both houses and on both sides of the aisle,” said Kate Duvall, president and CEO of the Charlottesville-based Piedmont CASA and a member of the CASA State Legislative Committee. “I think it really speaks to an understanding of the value that CASA brings and an understanding of the need to support our program, so that we can support these really vulnerable children who are going through what may be the hardest times of their lives.”
Sunday is the deadline for Virginia’s House and Senate appropriations committees to report their respective budget proposals for the upcoming two-year budget cycle that begins July 1. From there, the budgets must be approved by both chambers and eventually the governor.
“I have personally represented the DSS in hundreds of abuse and neglect cases and can attest to the invaluable role that CASA volunteers play in providing all of us in the courtroom information about how to best serve, heal, and support children who need state intervention and protection,” Callsen said in a statement to Cardinal News. “They maximize their dollars by recruiting and training high quality volunteers (I used to be one) and our further investment as a state will help make it so no child is left waiting for an advocate when they need it the most.”
Nearly 20 years of growing demand, stagnant funding
CASA’s state general fund support has been capped at $1.615 million since 2008, according to a CASA fact sheet.
Meanwhile, CASA’s number of cases and corresponding waitlists for services have increased; cases have become more complex due to compounding societal challenges such as addiction, mental health, and a lack of affordable housing; and the child welfare workforce has become more strained across both the human services and judiciary systems, Duvall said.
Even to just account for inflation since 2008, CASA’s funding would need to increase to at least $2.4 million in today’s dollars, Duvall said.
Sen. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg, has proposed an alternate budget amendment that would increase CASA’s funding enough to cover inflation since 2008, bringing the program’s total annual funding to about $2.5 million rather than the $4 million initially requested.
The need to ask for a funding boost “came to a head” after a work group presented a report on CASA to the governor and General Assembly in 2024, Duvall said. The work group set out to determine if CASA should become a mandated program in every locality across the state — currently, it’s not. The startling reality in the report, Duvall said, is that thousands of children in areas with CASA programs are going unserved, and “we need to take care of the programs that we have before we start to look to expand.”
Last year, “While our program served 220 children, 223 additional children in our community went without a CASA advocate simply because we did not have the capacity,” Stronza said of CASA of Central Virginia. “With adequate staffing and sustainable funding, we could have served 443 children. That gap is not about willingness or need. It is about resources.”
Today, Stronza said, 112 children in the Lynchburg metro area are on a waitlist for CASA services.
State funding can only be spent on certain CASA line items, Duvall said, and most programs funnel state dollars into staff salary and benefits. If CASA programs can increase staff salary, strengthen or introduce staff benefits, and hire more staff who train and manage volunteers, they will be equipped for “better retention, better recruitment and expanded capacity,” Duvall said.
Puzzle pieces of investment
In the 2024 fiscal year, Virginia CASA programs got about 17% of their funding from the state, 18% of their funding from federal sources, and the rest from donations, foundation grants and other agencies, according to a Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services fact sheet.
But federal funding is a “moving target,” Duvall said, and the current $1.5 million that Virginia CASA programs receive from federal Victims of Crime Act funding is projected to decline substantially by 2030.
It makes investment from the state all the more important, she said.
Ebbin said CASA funding is a “worthy investment” in the state’s abused and neglected children, especially when the program’s cost-effectiveness is taken into consideration.
In Virginia, it costs about $2,800 annually to provide CASA advocacy services to one child. Compared to the $8,400 annual cost for foster care and $70,000 for residential treatment, CASA “offer[s] a highly efficient use of public and private resources … and reduces the need for far more costly interventions later, benefiting both children and taxpayers,” according to a CASA fact sheet.
CASA’s studies have shown that children with a CASA volunteer are half as likely to reenter the foster care system than those without, and they spend an average of eight months less in foster care than those without.
“This really is minimal financial investment for someone who is going to be fully invested in that child,” Duvall said. “You’ve got this one volunteer who is a consistent presence for that child or that sibling group, when lots of other people — parents, social workers, attorneys — may be changing or kind of in and out of that child’s life. The CASA becomes often not just the advocate to tell that child’s story to the judge through their reporting and their investigation, but also they become the historian for that child’s case who knows the right things to ask for and look for.”