HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Reno County CASA program is ending.
"It's effective March 1st," said Sharon Stokes. "We just are having a really difficult time trying to get volunteers in there to keep it going."
There are just too many cases for the volunteers they have.
"We have over 200 cases of suspected child abuse and neglect that CASA works with," Stokes said. "Currently, we were down to five volunteers. Three were active and had cases. We just felt like where we could best use our resources would be the Citizen Review Board program."
That program works differently than CASA as it deals with cases in a way that is a little more removed from the situation.
"The CRB reviews court cases like the CASA, only it is a quasijudicial arm of the court, where the volunteers go through the training, similar to the CASA program, but they meet once a month," Stokes said. "They are assigned cases to review and then they are able to bring all the players in to a room where everybody has an opportunity to tell what's working, what's not working and make recommendations."
Stokes is retiring. Carma Massingill will be taking over leadership of the Citizen Review Board program.
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