In order to help more foster children in Oakland County, the Michigan Crime Victim Services Commission (CVSC) awarded CARE House of Oakland County a $152,000 Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) grant to support underserved victims of crime through an expansion of its CASA program, which currently assists 84 neglected and abused children annually who are wards of the Oakland County Circuit Court – Family Division.
“To serve as their voices, our volunteers spent more than 3,400 hours of service for children who are wards of the court,” said Blythe Spitsbergen, executive director, CARE House. “Support from Michigan CVSC allows us to carry out and expand our mission of reducing the number of children who will experience abuse, and giving children the opportunity to reclaim their lives after abuse.”
The funded expansion will bring an additional full time position to CARE House to train, teach and support volunteer advocates who are court-appointed to child neglect cases, allowing CARE House to double its number of CASA volunteers from 30 to 60, and also double the number of children served from 84 to 168. Additionally, the grant will support CARE House’s training sessions with both National CASA and Michigan CASA programming.
According to the National KIDS COUNT and Michigan League for Public Policy for 2015, Michigan ranks tenth in the U.S. for termination of parental rights (6,982 children entered foster care in 2015) and in the number of children in care (12,248 in 2015). Additionally, in 2015, 679 Oakland County children were removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect.
The Michigan CVSC is a state agency within the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. CVSC is in charge of funding and services for victims of a physical crime.
––––––––––––––––––––
Subscribe to the Legal News!
http://legalnews.com/Home/Subscription
Full access to public notices, articles, columns, archives, statistics, calendar and more
Day Pass Only $4.95!
One-County $80/year
Three-County & Full Pass also available
