Our Mission
To advocate for children who have experienced abuse and neglect; to give each child hope, support, and encouragement; to enhance their resiliency; and to ensure that their voices are heard until they have safe, permanent, and nurturing homes.
Our Vision
To provide a trained volunteer advocate for every child in the Lackawanna County Dependency Court System who has experienced abuse and neglect.
Our Goal
The goal of CASA of Lackawanna is to prevent abused, neglected, and abandoned children from becoming lost in the Juvenile Dependency system and working to find them safe, permanent homes as soon as possible. We work carefully to match a CASA volunteer with a child to ensure that the child’s best interest is served.
CASA volunteers are appointed by judges, in a court order, to watch over and advocate for abused and neglected children, to make sure they don’t get lost in the legal and social service system or languish in an inappropriate foster home.
CASA volunteers stay with each case until it is closed, and the child is reunified with family or placed in a safe, permanent home. For many abused children, their CASA volunteer will be the one constant adult presence—the one adult who cares only for them.
How Can You Help?
CASA of Lackawanna helps to change children’s stories every day. With the ongoing support of our community and our dedicated CASA volunteers, we advocate for children in the child welfare system here in Lackawanna County to have safe, permanent homes. You can help support CASA of Lackawanna by volunteering to advocate for a child, donating to support our mission, or by learning more about CASA and helping to promote the mission and work of CASA in the community.
Volunteer with CASA
CASA volunteers are appointed by a judge to recommend the best possible outcome for an abused or neglected child’s future. A CASA volunteer may be the only adult a child has been able to rely upon in their entire lives. If you have a few hours a month to volunteer, you can make a difference in the life of a child.
The CASA Child Impact.
Find out how you can become a CASA volunteer and help a child find a safe, permanent home here.
Volunteers
30 Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) volunteers were assigned to a child’s abuse and neglect case in 2025.
Time
CASA volunteers generously donated ~2,000 hours of their time to provide best-interest advocacy for 101 children and youth. They provided 240 detailed reports to the court at quarterly hearings for the children.
Dedication
Less than 5% of children assigned a CASA volunteer re-entered the foster care system in 2024, as compared to 16% of the general population in foster care.
The Children & Youth
CASA of Lackawanna empowers a network of volunteers that provide services to foster children and youth from Lackawanna County. During the calendar year 2025, CASA volunteers provided best interest advocacy to 101 foster children and youth. Following are the demographics of the children served by CASA volunteers in 2025.
Children by Gender
Children by Age
Children by Ethnicity
Featured Story
Hope
What we provide is hope. One consistent, caring adult can change everything for a child, and their family.
I’d like to tell you a story of a girl we’ll call Faith. She was sleeping in a car with her mom, after they were evicted from their apartment. When she met Hope, her CASA, she was 9.
She was angry with her mother and seemed content to stay with her kind, supportive foster mom. Hope made sure that she and her mother were getting counseling to work on their relationship, and that Mom was working on the goals in her family service plan.
