Article submitted by James Master, The Pilot News Managing Editor
On Monday, Chastity Keller, executive director of CASA of Marshall County, presented Debra Feldman as the Marshall County CASA Volunteer of the Year. Feldman has spent over 500 hours since becoming a CASA volunteer in 2017.
Keller also shared a video with the commissioners and those in attendance. The video detailed some of the ways that CASA programs all over the state continued to operate throughout the pandemic.
“While everybody was shut down and at home, our CASA volunteers were still checking on kids either Facebooking them, texting them, calling them, Zooms. We still were able to check on those kiddos,” Keller said.
She said that while it does take the efforts of the volunteers, it takes the whole community to raise the children. “I want to thank all of you for supporting us.”
Keller stated that Feldman has had three cases that has continued throughout her time as a volunteer. “So she hasn’t had a vacation. I think this is the first time she’s been without a case in the past five years so we’re giving her a little break.”
Commissioner Kevin Overmyer asked how many children and volunteers are in the CASA Program.
“We have 30 volunteers. Some of them are one leave because of COVID concerns. We are assigned to 15 children right now. That’s a lot lower than it’s been in years. We don’t have a waiting list,” Keller said, adding that some of that has to do with the Department of Child Services changing some of their regulations and doing more in home family preservation than removing the children.
Overmyer and Keller agreed that in years past, the case count was much higher than 15.
“We had reached 100 when I first started,” she said.
She reiterated that “not because there isn’t any abuse going on, but I think the State itself is seeing that it’s better for the children to stay in the home if there’s a family to help them. They’re bringing in services in the home instead of taking the children out. They’re trying to make it work first.”
