Gregory's ServerIn the US, most states have programs that assign volunteer advocates to children and youth in the foster care system (CASA and GAL are the acronyms). Anyone with a clean record w/r/t kids can do the training. It’s the weirdest band-aid on a broken system but until we fix the system, it’s also essential work that helps keep kids from falling through some terrible gaps.
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As you can probably imagine, this work attracts a whole lot of well-intentioned straight white retired women with money time on their hands, which…it is what it is, culturally and politically. None of this SHOULD be volunteer work, but the professional social worker I work with has literally dozens of cases. The needs are immediate. So will say that if you could use a way to make a child or teenager’s life a little safer and more stable in an increasingly scary time, this is a way to do that. @kissane a good friend of ours is going through a nasty divorce w/a narcissist, who in the initial hearing was given almost full custody of their kid & has been poisoning their relationship with the other parent thanks to some missteps by the narcissist & the GAL, our friend now has a protection order against the narcissistic parent; may get full custody & other parent may only get supervised visits I’ve seen firsthand the good these people can do – they’re also tremendously backlogged  @kissane Chiming in to say for anyone reading that as a foster parent I have seen first hand that CASA reps are SOOOOO important |
I’ve been doing it since 2018 and I can attest that there is a huge need for advocates, especially for people who are anti-racist and committed to protecting LGBTQ kids, and to maintaining kinship bonds whenever it’s possible to do safely.
Technically you’re a voice for the kid in court but most of my work has been fixer shit: Calling every practice in a metro area until I can find someone to do a procedure, catching missed documents, making a nuisance of myself when the system drops a ball.