Jessamine County CASA volunteers earn Presidential Volunteer Service Awards

Jessamine County Judge-Executive David West, front left, presents Jessamine County CASA Volunteer Kellye Cole with her Presidential Volunteer Service Award at Tuesday’s Jessamine Fiscal Court meeting.

Ten Jessamine County CASA volunteers have been honored for earning the Presidential Volunteer Service Award. 

The award recognizes volunteers nationally for contributing large numbers of hours to worthy causes. Together, Jessamine’s 10 award recipients gave 2,094 hours to their work with the CASA program in 2023, advocating for the best interests of abused and neglected children in the family court system.  

Jessamine County Judge-Executive David West and county magistrates recognized the volunteers at Tuesday’s fiscal court meeting. They presented the PVSA to one of the volunteers who was able to attend, Kellye Cole. 

Six of the volunteers gave more than 100 hours each and received the Bronze PVSA: Anna Jones, Cole, Alex Allouch, Maquel Sarantakos, Barbie Carter and Charlene Floyd. 

Four volunteers invested more than 250 hours and received the Silver PVSA: April Jilbert, Herb Toews III, Julie Creech and Julie Turner. 

The volunteers each received a pin or medallion based on the level of their award, a certificate, and a letter of thanks signed by the U.S. President. 

CASA volunteers are matched with children in the family court system who need an advocate. Each volunteer visits their child monthly, talks to adults in their child's life and reviews medical and educational records. While volunteers can go above and beyond like the PVSA recipients, on average a CASA volunteer contributes between 5 and 10 hours a month. 

CASA volunteers' reports help family court judges make more informed decisions and can lead to improved outcomes for children, including more services they need to thrive and shorter times in the system. 

In Jessamine County in 2023, there were 236 new cases of child abuse or neglect and likely more than 470 children with open family court cases. The 57 children served by Scott County’s 24 volunteers represent about 12% of the total children with cases. 

“I think that’s staggering. We don’t often hear about it with family court being closed, but we at CASA are working to break that cycle,” CASA Executive Director Melynda Jamison said after the award ceremony. “We can only do that work with the volunteers. So they are really the lifeblood of our organization.” 

Jamison said CASA is grateful to Jessamine Fiscal Court and the City of Nicholasville for providing funding for the CASA program. 

“Without their funding, Jessamine County couldn’t have a CASA program, and these volunteers couldn’t invest so much time in Jessamine County children,” Jamison said. 

Anyone interested in becoming a CASA volunteer can email jessaminecounty@casaoflexington.org or call (859) 484-6554 for more information. A regional training for new volunteers will be held in Lexington, June 24-28. You can see the schedules for all upcoming trainings at www.casaoflexington.org/training.