Court Appointed Special Advocates of Santa Barbara County

The Board of Directors of CASA Santa Barbara, in conjunction with the Executive Director and Administrative Staff, put together a Strategic Plan to provide a disciplined approach to management to ensure it reached its goal of providing an advocate to every child who needs one by 2018. We were successful in this effort. Now we must work to maintain the service level needed to provide advocacy for every child in need.

VISION

Our vision is for every child to have a safe, loving home and to be given the opportunity to thrive.

• Nationwide, CASA provides a 75 to 1 ratio of children served to paid staff position. On average funding for one staff supervisory position within a local CASA program supports 40 trained volunteer workers, assigned to 75+ children’s cases within a year.
• Children with CASA volunteers spend 7.5 months less in foster care, experience fewer out of home placements and have significantly improved educational performance.
• California spends $867 per month for each child in foster care, so the average child saves the state taxpayer over $6,500 while the CASA Operating Costs are less than $2,200 per child served.
• More than 90% of children with CASA volunteers never reenter the child welfare system, a significant difference compared to the general foster care population. This outcome also results in significant savings in child welfare expenses.

CURRENT CONDITIONS

In 2018, 254 CASA volunteers served a total of 467 children in Santa Barbara County. This represented nearly all children in need.

In late 2019 we saw a dramatic increase in the number of children in need. The 27% increase cam at the same time as the pandemic challenges, and we soon had a waiting list of over 200 children.

Focused on growth, we have lowered the number of children on our waiting list, but we are actively working to meet the need of an additional 130 waiting children.

Our goals for our volunteer advocate program include:
• Increase the number of foster children served from to include all those in need;
• Recruit, screen and train 90 new volunteers.
We achieved our growth goals in both volunteer recruitment and children served. Our goal moving forward is to continue to recruit new volunteers to maintain the organization at capacity to serve every child, and to respond quickly to changes in the child welfare system that could result in increased need for advocacy for children.