CASA Superheroes Fly High & Run Fast!On September 21st, more than 2,500 superheroes ran, walked and flew through our CASA Superhero Run 5K and Kids 1K to help raise over $155,000 for children in need in Travis and Williamson Counties! This record breaking total would not be possible without our top sponsors: KLRU-TV, Univision 62, KVET 98.1 FM, HealthTronics Inc, RetailMeNot Inc, teleNetwork, 360 Press Solutions, Mueller - A Catellus Development, Rogue Running and The Austin Chronicle. We thank everyone who took part in this super event! See more photos and video at www.casasuperherorun.com.

Save the date for CASAblanca and Golf!

Visit www.casatravis.org/events to become a sponsor or purchase tickets for our exciting spring fundraising events!

Educational Advocacy Leads to a Family Happily Reunited

When young Ben began showing up at school with bruises and injuries regularly and blamed it on his mother, his school reported it to Child Protective Services (CPS) and Ben was removed from his mom’s care. From the beginning of the case, his mom was adamant that she hadn’t hurt Ben but that he caused these injuries, often scratching and hitting himself. Her attitude came off as abrasive and she developed

adversarial relationships with the school and everyone on the CPS case almost immediately.

It wasn’t until Stephanie became the CASA volunteer on this case that mom had someone who could really see her side. Stephanie pursued a relationship with this mom more than anyone else, and was finally successful in building trust and open communication. Mom started telling her about Ben and his behavior, explaining that’s how he’d always been and that they had adjusted their household to keep things calm and routine for him. Ben was also ending up with very similar injuries in his foster home and was using the same language to blame his foster mom as he had his own mom. Stephanie advocated for him to receive a complete psychological evaluation. Ben was diagnosed on the autism spectrum as having Asperger’s Syndrome. His mom had been telling the truth about his injuries all along.

Stephanie began working with Ben’s mom to build a support network for her family and secured special therapy sessions for her and Ben. His mom was advised to stay very active in his education, yet the negative relationship she had developed with his school had not been resolved and the school continued to distrust her. Stephanie knew that if something didn’t change for them, the school would continue to report her to CPS. She set up a meeting between Ben’s school and his mom to help mediate and improve their relationship.

During the meeting, Stephanie stressed how much both sides cared about Ben and only wanted what was best for him. She worked with each side to understand the other’s point of view. She helped to rephrase anything that came off as abrasive. This meeting was a turning point in Ben’s case. Ben was soon returned home and Stephanie continued to work with his mom and his school to set up a schedule of reporting difficulties, find ways to address his special needs, determine how to get homework done and more. Her advocacy for Ben’s educational needs ultimately helped him return safely to his own family.

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The Anderson FoundationAustin Bar FoundationAustin Pain Associates

Ann L. Benolken and Mark EngelingJessica and Jimmy BlacklockMary and Mathis Blackstock

Blue Cross Blue Shield of TexasBose Family Foundation

Steve BrownPatricia Burgess and Doug JeffriesBonita Griffith and David Chasis

Clark Mente Architects, Inc.ConocoPhillips Company

Yolanda and Chris ConyersJamie and James Cotton

Dorothy and John De La GarzaMichael & Susan Dell Foundation

Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc.Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc.

EZCorp, Inc.Ila and John Falvey

First Presbyterian ChurchFiserv

Susanne and Chad FranksJames N. Frinzi

Frost National BankGrace Covenant Church

Guardians of the Children - Austin ChapterTracy and Matthew Hamilton

Kara and Jay HartzellH-E-B

G Herver and Brad HermesKristi and Erik HooverKim and Kyle HughesJackson Walker LLP

Jasper Design AutomationKappa Alpha Theta - UT Chapter

Dana and Kemp Kasling

Kasling, Hemphill, Dolezal & Atwell, L.L.P.Korean Baptist Church of AustinBarb Kowal and Nancy Walling

Live Oak - Gottesman LLCLocal Independent Charities

The Long FoundationThe Lowe Foundation

Mercedes-Benz of AustinKevin J. Middleton

The Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte FoundationKennedy and John Neff

Carolyn and Tom NicewarnerGreg Norrell

Pfizer FoundationPotts + Blacklock PLLC

RetailMeNot, Inc.Joyce and Jack Sampson

Catherine and Charles SansburyGina and Buddy SchroederSeton Healthcare Network

si2Silicon Laboratories

Sno-BeachSpredfast

St. Thomas More Catholic ChurchBeth and Frank Stabile

Superior HealthPlanTela Innovations, Inc.

teleNetwork Partners, Ltd.David E. Thon

Topfer Family FoundationJanelle and Ken Treaccar

United Heritage Credit UnionUrban Mattress South AustinCapital City Post #8787 VFW

Nancy H. WebberPaul Zito

Thank you to our major donors ($1,000 and up) between April 16th and October 15th, 2013

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ASABLANCAFebruary 22nd, 2014Hyatt Regency Austin

May 5th, 2014The Hills Country Club

C A S A O F T R AV I S C O U N T Y, I N C .

www.casatravis.org 512.459.2272

CASA of Travis County exists to promote and protect the best interest of children who have been abused or neglected, by training volunteers to advocate for them in courts, in schools and in our community to help them find safe, permanent and loving homes.

Board of Directors: President - Jessica Blacklock; John Berkowitz, Anne Brigham, Everett Carmody, Jamie Cotton, Alicia Duleba, Matt Hamilton, Albert Hawkins, G Herver, Debbie Holley, Kemp Kasling, April Kubik, Todd Lewis, Lee E. Potts, John Recker, Benjamin Rubenstein, David Rubin, Jared Slosberg, Andy Valenzuela, Ashley Wright, Maria Wright.

A Project of

7701 N Lamar Blvd, Ste 301Austin, TX 78752

Exciting innovations ahead as we step into 2014!

Time passes and things change… I think change is exciting. In this newsletter I’m going to give you a preview of some changes we’re really proud of here at CASA. First off, we’re going totally digital with our newsletter, so this will be the last print newsletter you’re likely to receive from us. We don’t want to lose touch with you, so if you don’t already receive our emails, please head to www.casatravis.org and click the white “Stay Updated” button on the top right to sign up.

In much more exciting news, one big change is that effective October 1st, CASA of Travis County is now being appointed by the judges as the official “education advocate” to school-aged children in addition to being appointed as guardian ad litem as we always have been. We believe that our volunteers serving as official education advocates will have a huge impact

on educational outcomes for the children we serve, and we are very proud to be taking on this role. Read the complete report on this decision and other recommendations from the Model Court Education Advocacy Pilot at http://bit.ly/TravisEduReport. One example of the strong positive influence CASA can have in the school setting is captured in our volunteer Stephanie’s story on the other side of this newsletter.

To ensure that all of our volunteers have the tools they need to be education advocates for the children to whom they’re appointed, and recognizing that we’ve been trying to cover a lot of ground in our very full volunteer training, we are expanding our volunteer training classes. Beginning in 2014 we will offer 12 3-hour classes for a total of 36 hours of pre-service training required of new volunteers (compared to 10 classes previously). Current volunteers will be invited and encouraged to take advantage of our new classes to enhance their advocacy skills.

And in preview of another announcement that we’ll make more fully in 2014, we will be rolling out a family finding program that will enable us to do an ever better job of finding extended family and other supportive adults for kids in foster care.

None of these innovations would be possible without your support. I encourage you to respond to the recent appeal you received from our volunteer Carolyn Nicewarner, or head to www.casatravis.org to make an end-of-year donation to support all of our efforts in advocating for children who’ve been abused or neglected.

- Laura D. Wolf, Executive Director

Don’t Miss Out! We’re going digital and this is our last print newsletter. Sign up for email updates

on www.casatravis.org!