CASA Volunteers are Screened to Ensure the Success of the Program

The Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program in Camden County, GA, has successfully placed abused children with volunteer advocates. This non-profit agency provides trained, screened, and supervised volunteers, appointed by the judge, to speak for the interests of abused and neglected children involved in juvenile court proceedings.

Candidates who want to participate in the program have to undergo a screening process that includes fingerprinting, a background check, and thorough interviews. After this initial screening process, volunteers are then required to attend 28 hours of training and spend a minimum of 12 hours observing court proceedings before they are qualified to be child advocates.

Once volunteers are screened, they are able to participate in this program and provide a voice in court for abused and neglected children. Ensuring the safety of all of those involved, by conducting background checks on the volunteers, the CASA program is able to experience continued success in their matches.

Texas Realizes the Necessity of Running Reliable Background Checks on Volunteers

Nonprofits across Texas are realizing that although they are paying thousands of dollars for background checks, they are running searches which are far from foolproof. Aimed at keeping sex offenders and others with a criminal past from volunteering at their facilities, the checks often are incomplete in their results and do not catch hits in the records of volunteers.

The most comprehensive checks available are often too expensive many nonprofit officials said, and can often cost upwards of $60 per volunteer. Running these in-depth searches on volunteers would take money away from core services. Thankfully, the Department of Public Safety has just recently opened up their records to many nonprofits, which otherwise would not be available to the public. These records include arrests and warrants throughout the state. Although not as comprehensive as it could be, this search through the DPS drastically improves the probability of a nonprofit finding a volunteers' criminal past if there is one.

More states need to follow the example set by Texas and grant nonprofits access to certain government criminal database searches for free or at a minimal cost.