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Local CASA seeks larger county match as child abuse caseloads surge
Summary
Evansville/Vanderburgh CASA reported a sharp rise in children involved in abuse-and-neglect cases, requested a county appropriation to qualify for state matching funds and warned that funding shortfalls would reduce the number of children served.
The executive director of the local Court Appointed Special Advocates program (CASA) told the council the program is seeing a surge in children involved in abuse-and-neglect cases and needs a larger county appropriation to capture available state matching funds.
Sarah Rice, executive director of the Vanderburgh County CASA program, said the program's state matching funds are statutorily tied to the number of adjudicated children and that the county must appropriate its required share to receive dollars from the state.
"It is statute that the county has to appropriate funds to make us eligible for that match," Rice said, explaining that one of the state grants requires a dollar-for-dollar county match and another requires a 100% match. She asked the council to consider a year-over-year increase in county support to expand capacity.
Rice said the local juvenile caseload rose sharply beginning in 2023 and that the program now has more than 1,000 children involved in active cases; the local volunteer program has a wait list of about 651 children. She described the program's volunteers as speeding children's exit from foster care and lowering recidivism: "Whenever a CASA advocate is appointed to those children...they're coming out of foster care on average eight months faster than kids who don't have an advocate."
The director said the county appropriation is a condition of statutory matching funds and that without the county match the program cannot receive the state funding. Rice said a requested increase would allow CASA to serve roughly 200 additional children who otherwise would not have an advocate.
Council members asked whether nearby counties have similar programs; Rice said CASA exists in most Indiana counties (87 of 92), though program scale varies widely. Council members suggested the county could consider reallocating existing local funds to meet the match or identify other funding sources.
No formal action was taken at the hearing; council members discussed possible funding sources and signaling to state lawmakers the local need for more resources to address rising child-abuse caseloads.
