CASA Of Southeast Missouri

Mission Statement
The Court Appointed Special Advocates project of the Thirty-Second Judicial Circuit of Missouri (includes Bollinger, Cape Girardeau, and Perry Counties) provides well trained, court-appointed volunteer advocates to serve as independent monitors and advocates for abused and neglected children in and out of foster care, under the jurisdiction of the Thirty-Second Judicial Circuit Juvenile Court.

Our ultimate goals are to ensure that the child’s immediate and long term needs are met while in foster care: that a healthy, permanent placement is secured for each child in a timely fashion: and to heighten public awareness and response to the needs of the abused and neglected children.

History:
In the fall 1991, Representative Mary Kasten, and several individuals met with the Honorable Stephen N. Limbaugh, Jr., Circuit Court Judge and Juvenile Court Judge of the Thirty-Second Judicial Circuit. The purpose of this unique meeting was to solicit the Court’s support for the development and implementation of a court-appointed special advocate program in the Juvenile Court.. (In 1985 the Missouri Legislature, in Section 210.160.5 RSMo, had provided for the development of such programs in all of Missouri’s Juvenile Courts.) Following this initial meeting a Board of Directors was chosen, under the guidance of the Juvenile Court Judge. This Board, composed of individuals who have a long standing history of being involved in working with abused and neglected children, then began the process of developing and implementing a CASA program. Out of these meetings, CASA of Southeast Missouri, Inc., was formed with the specific purpose of training court-appointed special advocates.

The goals of the program are to recruit, develop, and train a corps of CASA volunteers to become involved in the cases of individual children. The CASA’s mission is to encourage the foster care system to work as efficiently as possible to provide permanent, healthy families for abused and neglected children in foster care, and to work with the families of children in foster care for a timely re-unification of the family and child(ren).

Since the goals of the project are in accord with those of the Juvenile Court of the Thirty-Second Judicial Circuit, a cooperative agreement was reached and the project set to begin in January, 1992, with a target date of June 1, 1992, for the swearing in of newly trained CASA volunteers.

Contact people:

Lori Schutte, Office Manager, (phone), (email) Pam Jenkins, Program Coordinator, (phone), (email)

Office fax number: (573) 335-8407

Address:

937 Broadway, Suite 201 P.O. Box 1131 Cape Girardeau, MO 63702 (See a map)

Web Site: http://www.capecasa.com

Directions:

We are in the Braodway Plaza Building, which used to be the old Medical Arts Building. We are adjacent to Blimpies across from SEMO Campus Student Center.

Last updated on August 4, 2009