CASA's Mission

All children have a right to a home with loving people to care for them. Each year in the United States, thousands of children are abused, neglected or abandoned by their families. Over 270,000 of them are removed from their homes and placed in foster care or institutions. In Knox County, Tennessee there are almost 3,000 calls of abuse and neglect investigated each year. Of these calls, approximately 500 of those children are placed in foster care.

Many of these children become lost in an overburdened child welfare system that cannot pay close attention to each child whose life is in its hands. Sometimes a child who can be saved, instead becomes adrift in foster care for months -- even years.

It's up to a judge to decide their future. Should they remain in foster care, be reunited with their parents, or should they be allowed to be adopted? This is where CASA comes in.

CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates. CASA volunteers are ordinary citizens, specially trained to work alongside attorneys and social workers as officers of the court appointed by the judge to speak up for abused and neglected children.

Our only mission is to speak up for children who have no one else to speak up for them.