2023 Strategic Plan Survey Response

A letter from the Executive Director

Melynda Jamison

Hello CASA Volunteers,

Thank you to each of you who took the time to complete our 2023 Strategic Plan Survey! Some of the staff and I have looked over the feedback and discussed ways to implement suggestions to make improvements. Your input is shaping what our strategic plan for the next three years will look like. We wanted to share with you some things in the works thanks to your feedback.

We are excited for what the next three years will bring for CASA of Lexington!

Sincerely,

Melynda Jamison, CASA of Lexington Executive Director

Volunteer Dashboard

Some survey responses made it clear we have not made the Volunteer Dashboard on our website as visible as it needs to be. The Volunteer Dashboard is filled with useful information and links and helps you stay on top of your volunteer hours, training and more. The CASA resource directory is available on the dashboard, and this is also where you can find our calendar of upcoming CEU opportunities. You can access the Volunteer Dashboard at www.casaoflexington.org/dashboard, by clicking on “Volunteer Dashboard” under “Current Volunteers” on our website, and now by clicking on the Volunteer Dashboard button at the top of the home page.

We encourage every CASA volunteer to bookmark the dashboard in their browser so they can quickly access it. We will be featuring the dashboard more prominently in our email communications and developing the dashboard’s content and features more in the coming years so that it becomes even more useful as a home for your volunteer needs.

Growing the CASA Program

It was clear from most of your responses to the survey that our volunteers are just as passionate about growing CASA of Lexington to serve more children as we are! We will soon begin providing more information via email and the Volunteer Dashboard on easy ways for you to help us find more CASA volunteers. Personal referrals are the No. 1 way we get new CASA volunteers. Not only that, personal referrals are even more important when we talk about recruiting male CASA volunteers, our most under-represented group. More than half of our current male CASA volunteers signed up thanks to a personal referral.

Watch for monthly suggestions on ways to spread CASA awareness, as well as encouragement and incentives for helping to recruit new CASA volunteers. Our Board of Directors and Staff are jumping in on this effort as well!

Continuing Education Opportunities

We heard from you that you enjoy certain kinds of continuing education opportunities, and we will be working to increase those opportunities in the coming years. Watch for more tours of resource agencies, such as rehabilitation centers, day schools and therapy providers, as well as more traditional CEU presentations being provided by representatives of these agencies. We will also begin offering quarterly “eat out with CASA” social CEU events, at which you can eat out with other CASA volunteers, board members and staff and earn CEU credit while doing it.

Volunteer Mentoring Program

We are aiming to support more new CASA volunteers in the coming years through our Volunteer Mentoring Program. This program pairs new CASA volunteers with veteran volunteers who plan to step down soon, but have agreed to be assigned to a case with a new volunteer, offering them guidance and sharing from their experience. Mentors are limited and may not always be available. More details about this program will arrive in 2024.

In Case You Didn’t Know…

You all touched on many different topics and issues in your survey responses. We’ve compiled additional responses and information you requested in the answers below. You can always ask for additional information on any topic from your Volunteer Manager or by emailing info@casaoflexington.org.

  • If you said you would be willing to be featured in a video or social media post promoting CASA (or if you didn’t take the survey but you would), please email info@casaoflexington.org. There are several ways you can help us recruit new volunteers with very little effort on your part.

  • Current CASA volunteers can always attend any of the training sessions offered during a new volunteer training class and receive CEU credit for attending. This can be a great a way to refresh your memory from your initial training. Two really good options for this are to attend the session on court-report writing or the final session featuring a panel of current volunteers talking about what they do. Training class schedules can be viewed at www.casaoflexington.org/training.

  • If you are assigned to a CASA case and do not have one of our CASA Volunteer Handbooks, please ask your Volunteer Manager for one. These are now handed out at case assignment; they contain a lot of valuable information, including a checklist for what to do after being assigned a case, best practices and cheat sheets of information CASA volunteers regularly need to know.

  • If you feel the concerns or comments you provided in the survey were not addressed by this response, please contact me directly at mjamison@lexingtonky.gov so we can discuss and work toward a solution.