CASA Connection

026. Pride Month And What It Means To Us

June is a time where we recognize and celebrate Pride Month at our CASA program. As advocates and supporters of our LGBTQ+ community, it's important for our CASA program to be visible within our community.  Whether it's setting up a Pride Day booth or helping to educate people with an open mind, to listening to LGBTQ+ community stories, we support our LGBTQ+ community. Listen to what Pride Month means to us, as well as the conversation, our Executive Director had with her trans daughter, Alex!

025. A Conversation With Davon Woods | Raising Foster Care Awareness

We recently spoke to Davon Woods, the founder of Foster Kids Matter, about his and his twin brother's journey across the United States. The Woods brothers are raising foster care awareness by walking in all 50 states and spreading the word about how we can all help children who are going through the foster care system. Davon spoke to us about his story, thoughts on the foster care system, and how he wants to inspire others to become more educated about the system he and his twin brother grew up in.

024. Foster Care Awareness Month!

It's May! So that means it's National Foster Care Awareness Month! Here at CASA SHaW we like to celebrate and talk about our positive impact stories. Through these stories we are able to highlight how our CASA volunteers, one step at time, truly make a difference in the lives of the abused and neglected foster children they serve. This episode contains three stories: The Wrestler, The Readers, The Nurse. Let's keep spreading the word about how we can make a positive impact in the world of foster care!

023. A Parent’s Journey with Kristen

This episode takes you into the world of a parent's journey. Kristen had her baby taken from her due to substance abuse addiction. She battled and came out on top. Thankfully, she is here and healthy today, telling her story to our CASA program in the hopes that her story will inspire others.

022. Child Abuse Prevention Month

Every April, we commemorate and recognize Child Abuse Prevention Month. It's a great time to not only learn about how and why the cycle of abuse continues to perpetuate itself generation after generation, but also what we can do to curb this awful phenomenon. In this episode, we discuss why child abuse happens and what we can do to prevent it more in the future.

021. How To Build Resiliency

The concepts of building resiliency are different for foster youth than those who are not navigating their way through the child welfare system. In this episode, we talked about a Florida State University study that specifically dove into building resiliency for youth. There are six domains they identified, which we discussed this week.

020. Positive Childhood Experiences

Our CASA program has not only focused on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), but we have equally focused on Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs). Various research and study has been done over the years that highlights PCEs, what they are, how they're defined, and how many PCEs there are in the world. Connectivity plays such an important part of PCEs. We dove into this important subject on this episode.

019. Engaging Racial Diversity In Foster Care

Our CASA program at CASA SHaW is proud of the work we've undertaken over the years to engage racial diversity, not just within our region, but throughout our CASA network within the State of New Jersey. How can we better reflect the foster children we serve day-in and day-out? How does cultural competency play a role within our CASA program? We're continuing to take positive steps to make change within our local communities on behalf of foster children.

018. Disproportionality, Implicit Bias, And The History Of Race

Disproportionality and bias is a reality within the child welfare system and world of foster care. As a result, we have been engaging our CASA community and programs throughout the State of New Jersey with various trainings and educational-based learning platforms to help our advocates and stakeholders understand the realities of implicit bias, where it comes from, and how we can combat it in the future. We're taking steps to make a positive change in our communities.

017. Human and Sex Trafficking in Foster Care

Human and sex trafficking is a billion dollar industry that targets vulnerable children in all of our communities. Within this episode, we discuss those vulnerabilities and help to raise awareness of how human and sex trafficking swirls around the realm of foster care throughout the nation.