CASA of Northeast Oklahoma provides a voice for abused and neglected children in the courts of Rogers, Mayes, Craig, Ottawa, Delaware and Washington counties, as well as the Shawnee Tribal Court.

The vision of CASA of Northeast Oklahoma is that every abused and neglected child has a CASA volunte

Goal One: To increase organizational capacity to ensure that every child who needs a CASA volunteer has access to one.

Goal Two: To sustain CASA of Northeast Oklahoma's ability to serve the region by diversifying funds, building a permanent headquarters, and developing staff and volunteers to meet challenges head-on.

Goal Three: To continuously improve services by scanning the environment, determining changing needs and issues in the region, and positioning resources where they are needed when they are needed.

Leadership recently underwent executive coaching, which helped leadership identify limiting beliefs and ideas and begin setting course for new initiatives. Leadership has participated in a variety of webinars and other professional development classes in the past 18 months through the Office of Victims Services and National CASA. Leadership serves as Chair of the Oklahoma Child Death Review Board Eastern Team. This experience puts leadership in touch with other professionals in the environment to stay on top of trends and issues in the region. In addition, leadership is on a constant quest to learn more: reading learned papers, researching new ideas, and reading books to hone leadership's skills. The Board of Directors supports leadership in these endeavors and creates ample opportunities for further education and skill development.

During the 2022 election cycle, several judicial seats and District Attorneys seats were turned over to new leadership. CASA of Northeast Oklahoma depends upon these relationships to ensure that our volunteers can be assigned to cases and that they will be given credibility by the sitting judge. New memoranda of understanding (MOUs) have to be signed each time there is a change in the judiciary. Although we do know all of the candidates and work to develop relationships with each one, it isn't until election day that we find out who will be sitting on the bench and serving in those elected positions. After election day, we spent an extraordinary amount of time meeting with new judges, DAs, and other elected officials to ensure that CASA services were desired and would be given consideration and credibility. One of the new judges had many questions about the processes for requesting and appointing CASA volunteers. He asked for additional information. As a result of CASA's responses to those requests for information, the judge hosted a "systems meeting" with attorneys and parties to the case to help smooth out some issues with both processes and personnel. Although this was a challenging time of transition, the judge handled contested matters even-handedly and with professionalism. He reinforced his desire to have CASA services available to children in his courtroom and signed the MOU. This experience reinforced the need for strong relationships and open, honest communication with our legal partners. The experience also highlighted areas in need of improvement, transparency, and further relationship-building with other community partners.