CASA OF MARION COUNTY INC

Diversification of volunteers:

We need to diversify our volunteers, particularly bilingual volunteers. We also need to diversify our board to better reflect the vibrant communities we serve.

Addressing mental health needs:
We want to build a wellbeing assessment for each child in care, so that we can track the behavioral, psychological, and emotional well-being of children in care.

To recruit more bilingual volunteers:

1. Attend community events where Spanish is spoken in Marion County

2. Distribute volunteer recruitment brochures printed in Spanish

3. Prepare, shoot, and publish Spanish-language recruitment videos on social media.

4. Apply for a grant to fund the salary, benefits, and training for a bilingual staff member.

To address mental health needs:

1. Review sample wellbeing assessment questionnaires.

2. Meet with OCN leadership and other CASA programs to review, edit, and finalize questionnaires.

3. Train CASA staff and volunteers on how to complete questionnaires and upload to CASA's databases.

Our Executive Director speaks basic Spanish and has numerous connections within the Spanish-speaking community. Our ED is also a trained mental health advocate, having trained over 1,000 legal and non-profit professionals in trauma-informed workplace practices. Our Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator is a person of color with lived experience in the adoption. Our staff are 33% persons of color and 33% lived experience in adoption or foster care systems. Our Board of Directors recently doubled in size and brings fresh energy, ideas and new connections to accomplishing our goals. Our grant writer is committed to helping CASA apply for grant opportunities to achieve our goals. Our office is fully staffed and is making preparations to attend the statewide advocacy conference to learn best practices for our daily operations.

Progress on Diversification:

Since January 2023, CASA of Marion County launched a new recruitment strategy, with a goal of adding more bilingual volunteers. That strategy is already paying dividends. We have doubled the number of Spanish-speaking volunteers since January. We have also increased the diversity of our Board of Directors from 20% to 30% BIPOC members. Our new Executive Director, who started in January 2023, increases the diversity of our organization by way of speaking basic Spanish, lived experience in domestic violence, and an invisible disability. Our ED hired an equity consultant. Following the consultant's recommendations, we have improved the inclusivity of CASA's website and social media postings. Our BOD recently approved an equity statement, which is now published on CASA's website.

Our office is fully-staffed, but with additional grant funding we can recruit, hire, and train a bilingual staff member to work more closely with Spanish-speaking volunteers and families. We want to continue to recruit more Spanish-speaking volunteers.

Progress on Addressing Mental Health Needs:

We have met with our software provider to discuss how to build a wellbeing assessment questionnaire. We reviewed sample questionnaires amongst staff. We reached out to the Oregon CASA Network to help build a wellbeing assessment questionnaire for all children in care statewide. The goal is to create a uniform, statewide questionnaire so that all CASA programs (20 total) can compare and contrast data regarding child mental health, educational performance, and other factors important to assessing the behavioral, psychological, and emotional well-being of children in care. We are currently waiting to hear back from OCN on next steps.