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In an effort to determine the effects of the court-appointed special advocate (CASA) program in child protection court processes, an experimental group that received CASA services from 1987 to 1990 was compared to a group randomly selected from all cases without CASA involvement in the juvenile court during the same time period. A second comparison group consisted of CASA referrals that did not receive CASA intervention services due to an insufficient number of CASA volunteers. The CASA program was found to be effective in a number of ways. The study suggests that additional CASA volunteers should be assigned to child protection cases prior to case disposition, or preferably, at the pretrial period. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 (P.L. 93-247), requires states to appoint guardians ad litem to represent children in child protection court proceedings 42 U.S.C. Sec 5103(b)(2)(G) 1976 . The primary purpose of this requirement is to provide a reliable, approachable, and personal channel for the children to voice their concerns to the court. This child-focused movement has been a reaction to the question, Who best represents the interests of the child in court? Poertner & Press 1990: 537 . In 1977, Seattle first implemented the Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program, designating volunteers to represent children in child protection cases. Since then, CASA volunteers have been trained in many states to provide support and advocacy for abused and neglected children. According to a national survey, as of January, 1994, a total of 128,000 children were involved with CASA programs and 38,000 volunteers were assigned to these cases (with a ratio of one volunteer to three children) Shecket in press . The 1988 reenactment of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (P.L. 100-294) requires states to evaluate the effectiveness of these child-advocacy efforts. In the child welfare literature, however, only a few studies have reported an the effectiveness of CASA's involvement. One of the difficulties in researching CASA's effectiveness has been he lack of a control group with which to compare results. Control groups are important because confounding factors can be identified and minimized by using an experimental or quasiexperimental design. Another difficulty is the time and commitment from researchers that a longitudinal study requires. Most CASA programs may report only cross-sectional data with minimal information regarding their long-term effectiveness. Because the National CASA Association has been in existence only since 1982, it requires more time to evaluate and compile statistics regarding the effectiveness of CASA programs. Moreover, federal and state fundings for CASA research have been extremely scarce. Most of the funding for research has come from local private foundations and donations. As a result, the literature on long-term CASA effectiveness has been sparse. This article examines the current literature regarding the impact of CASA across the nation and discusses the findings and implications of an empirical study that evaluated a CASA program in terms of placement outcomes in a major city in the United States. Reasonable Efforts and CASA: A Literature Review Out-of-home care encompasses family foster home, group home, crisis facility, residential treatment center, relative home, or institutional care. In a study of children's placements in out-of-home care, Cole 1986 suggests that many external factors (such as demands on the family, family resources, and the family's perspective on the situation) must be recognized before an abused child is returned to the home. The requisite documentation of reasonable efforts to reunite families, as explicated in P.L. 96-272 (the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980), advocates a family-centered approach in child protection. This emphasis on the family, however, may be misinterpreted as favoring the parents by returning abused children to the parents' control. …
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