CASA: Court Appointed Special Advocates
CASA: COURT APPOINTED SPECIAL ADVOCATES
Training: September 26 - December 20, 2006; Offices of CASA; Mel Watkin, Instructor
Exhibition SITE #1: PPRC Photography Project Gallery
January 16 - May 4, 2007
Exhibition SITE #2: World Trade Center St. Louis
January 23 - March 15, 2007
Website: www.casastlcounty.org
CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) relies on ordinary people to volunteer for an extraordinary need. Area children who have endured substantiated abuse or neglect often find themselves under the watchful eye of the local Family Court, where full dockets and overloaded child welfare professionals are the norm. (Children's Division workers juggle as many as 40 cases at a time.) After a successful screening process and completion of 33 hours of training, CASA volunteers (known simply as CASAs) become officers of the court and are assigned to the most complex cases. To advocate on behalf of their child, CASAs learn about the circumstances that brought the child to the Court's attention, try to grasp the child's current needs and observe their living situation, which is often in a group home or foster care. As part of a professional team, CASAs spend time with their child, conduct extensive research, and maintain on-going discussions with all parties so that they can make recommendations to the Court on the child's behalf. The goal of every CASA is to settle their child in a safe, permanent home. More often than not, a CASA's dogged support prevents a child's case from slipping through the cracks in an overwhelmed system.
The legal guardian of children in foster care is the Family Court, which carefully protects their privacy. CASA children, therefore, can rarely be named or photographed. To accommodate this situation, the Photography Project abandoned its normal classroom-style training and worked with four foster children and their CASA volunteers in pairs. The goal was to use photography to "build" a portrait without showing the child's face. We introduced participants to 17th century Dutch vanitas paintings -- in essence, still-life paintings of objects that symbolically portray their owner. In 1668, Maria Van Oosterwyck, for example, painted a vanitas of one of her patrons crammed with symbolic objects: a worn knapsack, a globe, a leather-bound journal, a mouse chewing on a half-eaten ear of corn, paper money and coins, and a single drop of morning dew. Seen together the objects represent the patron's travel to the Americas and business interests, while also conveying the passage of time and brevity of life. Because foster children rarely have the opportunity to collect childhood mementos, their CASA volunteers gathered or created objects for their child's vanitas photograph. Sara, age 8, and her CASA brought in a few beautiful things, including a small blue-and-white patterned vase and a tiny high-heeled porcelain sandal. Sara combined these treasures with her beloved fuzzy winter coat and Teddy Bear. She titled the photograph Vanitas Without Me. Carmen, age 14, wisely concluded that friendship was the most important "thing" she could think of and wanted to be photographed with her best friend, another foster child. Since neither of the girls' faces could be photographed, Carmen, following in the footsteps of African-American photographer Lorna Simpson, created a timed-release photograph of herself and her friend with their backs to the camera.
--Mel Watkin, Instructor and Director
PPRC Photography Project
PARTICIPANTS:
CASA volunteer, Paula Chepey and Carmen, age 14
CASA volunteer, Claudia Kasen and Michael, age 12
CASA volunteer, Sally Sprowls and Valisa, age 16
CASA volunteer, Linda Stewart and Sara, age 8
COMMUNITY PARTNERS:
CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates of St. Louis County)
World Trade Center St. Louis, Clayton