Several months ago, a representative from the national non-profit organization Children's Rights reached out to Voices' leadership to discuss Children's Rights' potential involvement in Missouri and how it may impact the youth Voices serves.  Children's Rights, founded in 1995, is committed to addressing systemic issues that challenge the child welfare system in the United States.  Children's Rights uses the law to hold governments accountable and has secured court orders mandating reform of the child welfare system in several states.

As Court Appointed Special Advocates, we too, understand the challenges of Missouri's child welfare system and how these obstacles negatively impact our children!  Many of us can vividly recall instances where our children were failed or further harmed while in foster care.  Like Children's Rights, we want foster care to be a time of healing- a time to address past trauma, to receive educational support and quality medical care.  In fact, these are the very reasons why the CASA movement began!

To advance their efforts in Missouri, Children's Rights representatives have asked  Voices staff and CASA volunteers to assist in their efforts by sharing information about the children we represent.  While Voices shares Children's Rights' vision of repairing the broken child welfare system, we are unable to assist in this effort.  It is a direct violation of our organization's confidentiality policy, the bounds of confidentiality under our Court orders, and could jeopardize our relationship with the 21 ^st and 22 ^nd judicial courts. Voices' leadership team communicated our position to Children's Rights' local representative, however, others affiliated with Children's Rights, or in the child welfare community who are involved with or knowledgeable of Children's Rights, may be unaware of our stance .

Respectfully, we must insist that under no circumstances are Voices staff and CASA volunteers permitted to speak to Children's Rights about the cases of the children we serve. More pointedly, this restriction extends not just to Children's Rights but anyone not directly related to the case .   If you are contacted by someone asking for your input, please direct them to one of the members of our leadership team: me, Steve Moergen, Cheryl Latham or Colleen Polak.

Please review Voices' confidentiality policy, as stated in the CASA Volunteer Handbook, below.

Policies Guiding Volunteer Work, (CASA Volunteer Handbook)

Confidentiality Policy
Volunteers must respect children's and families' rights to privacy in regard to personal information. The CASA volunteer will hold any information received from any source to be confidential, which shall not be disclosed, except to the Court and, where allowed by the Court, to any party to the proceedings.

• The CASA volunteer shall not reveal to anyone, except their supervisor, the name of any person who has made a report of suspected child abuse or neglect.
• Confidential information shall only be shared with the CASA volunteer's supervisor.
• Disclosure of any information to any party should first be discussed with the CASA volunteer's supervisor.
• Case records and notes shall be secured and kept private and inaccessible to public view.
• Discussions of case-related material are not to be held in hallways, elevators, or other public places.

 

The CASA volunteer shall respect the child's right to privacy by maintaining confidentiality. The volunteer shall only share that information which the child has permitted the CASA volunteer to share or information that will affect the health, safety, or wellbeing of the child. The CASA volunteer should share all information from the child with their supervisor. These policies should be explained to the child at the CASA volunteer's first meeting with the child.

• No one outside of CASA personnel may have access to a CASA case record without a court order. Copies of the CASA volunteer's report to the Court are provided prior to a hearing to the Children's Division caseworker and/or their attorney, the Deputy Juvenile Officer and/or their attorney, and to parents and/or their attorneys, and to any other parties to the case or their supervisors.

Steve Moergen

Executive Director