250,000 foster children each year have no CASA volunteer, and children without one spend an average of 7.5 extra months in care

Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) are trained volunteers appointed by judges to advocate for a specific child's best interests throughout their time in the child welfare court system. Research shows children with a CASA volunteer experience one-third fewer placement changes and are half as likely to re-enter the child welfare system. Yet an estimated 250,000-300,000 children in foster care each year do not have a CASA volunteer assigned to their case. The shortage is so severe that in Minnesota, approximately 300 children have no Guardian ad Litem assigned at all — meaning no one in the courtroom is specifically tasked with representing the child's interests as distinct from the agency's or the parents' interests. Why it matters: A child without a CASA volunteer has no independent adult who knows their specific situation appearing in court on their behalf. So the judge makes decisions about the child's life based solely on the caseworker's report — written by someone carrying 24-31 cases who may have met the child once. So critical details about the child's wishes, school performance, medical needs, or relationship with a specific relative are never presented to the court. So the child spends an average of 7.5 additional months in foster care compared to children with CASA volunteers. So at a minimum cost of $25,000 per child per year in foster care, those extra months cost taxpayers approximately $1.35 billion annually for the 90,000+ unrepresented children. So the child accumulates more placement changes, more school disruptions, and more attachment trauma during those additional months. The structural root cause is that CASA programs are funded through a patchwork of federal grants, state appropriations, and private donations — not as a guaranteed right of every child in care. Recruiting and retaining volunteers for emotionally demanding work that involves reading abuse reports, attending court hearings, and visiting children in sometimes difficult settings is inherently difficult. The recent near-elimination of volunteer CASA programs in some states (Minnesota went from 300 to 12 volunteers) has shifted the burden entirely to paid staff who immediately face the same caseload crisis as caseworkers.