We are happy to announce that all in-person volunteer “Lunch and Learn” meetings have resumed!
Please see the monthly Continuing Education Newsletter for dates, times, locations, and topics.
Participating in ongoing training will maintain and improve the level of the CASA volunteer’s knowledge and skill about issues that may be relevant to their case. It is a requirement of National CASA that all advocates complete 12 hours of continuing education every year. Please make sure that your 12 hours of continuing education is completed by June 30, 2021. Once you have completed any of these suggested videos, or any other continuing educational training, please forward the completion certificate, if available, or other continued education topics covered to Tina@sbcasa.org so she can update your CASA volunteer file.
Here is a list of more Continuing Education resources that was pulled from other CASA sites. There may be a topic that would be informative for you, that can help you on your case. Feel free to access any of these suggestions.
Netflix
6 Balloons: A loyal sister struggles to stay afloat while driving her heroin-addicted brother to a detox center and looking after his 2-year-old daughter. 1Hr. 15 Minutes
All Together Now: A story about a teenager and her mother who are homeless and the teenagers resilience to do better. 1Hr. 33 Minutes
If Anything happens, I love you: Grieving parents journey through an emotional void as they mourn the loss of a child in the aftermath of a tragic school shooting. 12 Minutes
The Florida Project: A child who lives with her troubled mother in a budget motel near Disney World. 1Hr. 51 Minutes.
The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez: A boy’s brutal murder and the public trials of his guardians and social workers prompt questions about the system’s protection of vulnerable children. 6 Hr. Series.
System Crasher: Traumatized, violent and yearning for love, a 9-year-old bonds with a gruff mentor, as child-services workers struggle to find her a home. 2 Hrs.
Black or White: A widowed lawyer struggles to retain custody of his biracial granddaughter when the girl’s paternal grandmother questions his competence. 2 Hrs.
Gimme Shelter: is based on a true story about a pregnant teenager who flees her abusive mother in search of her father, only to be rejected. She is forced to survive on the streets until a compassionate stranger offers a hopeful alternative. A powerful movie demonstrating the impact one person can make on a child or teen. Every child deserves the chance to turn their life around. 1Hr. 41 Minutes.
HBO
Foster: This HBO documentary visits courtrooms, foster homes, juvenile centers, hospitals and the neighborhoods of Los Angeles to tell stories of the foster care system in the United States. One literally begins in the cradle, focusing on an infant born to a mother who tests positive for cocaine at the child’s birth. 1Hr. 52 Minutes
Finding The Way Home: A look at the circumstances faced by more than eight million children in orphanages and other institutions. 1Hr. 4 Minutes.
Hulu
I Was A Child Bride. The Untold Story: An investigation into the disturbing issue of children who are forced into marriages in America. They sit down with women who were children when they were coerced or pressured into marriage and had no legal way to escape. 1Hr. 23 Minutes.
The Day I Picked My Parents: a documentary series that follows ten foster children who are part of a revolutionary program operated by the nonprofit organization Kidsave in California, as they search to find their forever home. For the first time in their lives, they will have input into their own destiny as they decide where they want to live and who will be their family. 45 Minutes Each.
YouTube
Unadopted: What does it mean to be Unadopted? That’s what Noel Anaya sets out to discover after reading a copy of his foster care file. Follow Noel in his quest for answers about his family and his experience in the foster care system. The story interweaves Noel’s own journey with three other teens who, like so many foster youth, are at an emotional crossroad that may impact the rest of their lives: whether to emancipate from the foster care system, opt into extended care, or pursue a forever family. 35 Minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6vdKVyNedc
Everyone’s Business-Protecting our Children: Child abuse and neglect is a public health issue; it is preventable and it IS everyone’s business! 30 Minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_XZ4PzgUG8
Innocents Lost (Child Neglect Documentary): “Innocents Lost” is a hard-hitting documentary film about crimes against children around the world. Kidnapped, sold, starved, beaten and set to work round the clock, surviving on rubbish tips and roadsides; given to the Gods as punishment for a sin committed by a family member; neglected and written off as worthless; dumped in Gulags for stealing a loaf of bread. 1Hr. 38 Minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWLVyi7Fv48
Podcasts
TED Talk: Everything You think you know about addiction is wrong: What really causes addiction? How can we overcome it? Johann Hari has seen our current methods fail firsthand and began to wonder why we treat addicts the way we do. 15 Minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9DcIMGxMs
Engaging Youth in Foster Care: As the youth in care begin to develop their own sense of self and independence, you may experience difficulty engaging them to participate in their case plans or helping them realize the impacts their decisions may have on their long-term future.
Find it on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/7EPfVwl92FDZmaii37YNyu
Books
A Stolen Life A Memoir, Jaycee Dugard: a true crime memoir by American kidnapping victim Jaycee Lee Dugard. The memoir tells the story of the 18 years she spent in captivity in an unincorporated area in Contra Costa County, California. The memoir dissects what she did to survive, and cope mentally with her extreme abuse.
Whispers: The Voices of Paranoia: The paranoid inhabits a different realm of being, one that tilts the world ever so slightly. Delusions and hallucinations feed on each other, flourishing with amazing speed. Locked in a new mode of thinking the paranoid views life as from a cell. In a dozen case studies Dr. Ronald Siegel takes us on a chilling but mesmerizing journey into the dark mysteries of the human mind.
Invisible Kids: The real story on foster care and real solutions for making it better. When Marcus Fiesel s story of torture, abandonment, and a slow, agonizing death came to light, it was not exactly news to Holly Schlaack. She was an insider in the foster care system and Marcus horrible experience was just an extreme example of how she knew the system could fail.
More, Now, Again. A memoir of Addiction: Elizabeth Wurtzel published her memoir of depression, Prozac Nation, to astonishing literary acclaim. A cultural phenomenon by age twenty-six, she had fame, money, respect everything she had always wanted except that one, true thing: happiness. For all of her professional success, Wurtzel felt like a failure.
Journey to the other side of Dark: hen Olivia’s mother commits suicide, she is separated from her siblings, and a grandmother heretofore unbeknownst to her suddenly appears to claim her. Over time, Olivia grows to love this eccentric, artistic woman, who is determined to teach Olivia her craft, insisting that she has a “gift”.
Little Prisoners: A tragic story of siblings trapped in a world of abuse and suffering.
Tweak: Growing up on methamphetamines: The story that inspired the major motion picture Beautiful Boy featuring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet. This New York Times bestselling memoir of a young man’s addiction to methamphetamine tells a raw, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful tale of the road from relapse to recovery.
The Women Who Raised Me: Born as a ward of the state of Maine, the child of an unmarried Yankee blueblood mother and an unknown black father, Victoria Rowell beat the odds. The Women Who Raised Me is the remarkable story of her rise out of the foster care system to attain the American Dream—and of the unlikely series of women who lifted, motivated, and inspired her along the way.
Case #1 The Mary Ellen Wilson Files: As recently as 1874, no laws yet existed in this country for the protection of children. In New York of the same year, it was the widely publicized case of Mary Ellen Wilson—a nine-year-old girl who had been a prisoner in her tenement home, enduring unimaginable cruelty—that was the first to draw national and worldwide attention to both the social issue of child abuse and to the notion that children are entitled to humane treatment.
What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing: Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Perry explore how what happens to us in early childhood – both good and bad – influences the people we become. They challenge us to shift from focusing on, What’s wrong with you? or Why are you behaving that way? to asking, What happened to you?
Other Suggestions
The list below are some suggested videos that National CASA has approved as continuing education. You can use these videos to complete your 12 hours of continuing education or you can use what works best for your case. Make sure to check out the tab at the bottom that says “Videos & Quiz Tips.”
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders
Cultural Competency; Investing in Diversity as a Family Value
Living during a pandemic; Creating a Tool Box: Self-Care and Family Care Tips During the Pandemic
Child Abuse and Neglect; Child Sexual Abuse and the Foster Child; What do I do now?
Permanency Planning; Child-Centered Transitional Planning
General Substance Abuse; Addiction: What Happens to Adult Functioning and Protective Capacity When Drugs Hijack the Brain?
Communicating with Children and Families; Countering the Shame of the Resource Parent and Family
Family Strengths, Preservation, and Reunification; Relationships are the Key
Supporting LGBQT; and Gender Diverse Youth in Out-of-Home Care