Volunteer Resources
Welcome to the Resource Library
Here you’ll find everything you need to continue growing as a CASA volunteer, because your commitment makes a lasting impact.
Access in-service trainings, our New Volunteer Training Resources, the Cal CASA On-Demand Learning Platform, and the complete CASA Resource Library—all designed to support your advocacy journey.
Thank you for showing up, speaking up, and standing strong for the children and families we serve. Together, we’re building brighter futures.
Additional Resource Libraries
On Demand Learning Platform
Provided by California CASA
We are excited to share the launch of the On-Demand Learning Platform!
CASA volunteers are required to complete 12 hours of training each year. California CASA has offers dozens of training opportunities on a range of different topics and styles on our new learning platform.
New Volunteer Resources
Provided by CASA Connects for CASA Trainees
CASA of Placer, Yuba, and Sutter is delighted to have new volunteers join our CASA training, as you prepare to make an impact on the lives of vulnerable children and families in our community. Our goal is to equip you with the knowledge and skills you need to be an effective advocate.
Resource Library
Below, you’ll find an array of CASA volunteer resources, designed to grow your skills, knowledge, and impact.
Abuse
Books on Abuse
Educated by Tara Westover – Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
Click here to purchase from Thriftbooks.com
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com
Damaged by Cathy Glass – A true story of an abused child written by Cathy Glass. Cathy was Jodie’s foster parent and writes about the time she spent with her child. Jodie is removed from her home when she is eight years old because of suspected child abuse by her parents. After being in five foster homes within four months, social services contacted Cathy to see if she would take Jodie and care for her. Cathy has been a foster parent for twenty years and has had success with all the children for whom she has cared.
Videos on Abuse
A Mother’s Love (Cancer Hoax Documentary) – Tells the inside story of a mother, Terri Milbrandt, who pretended her daughter had cancer and appealed to her close- knit community for help to pay the medical bills.
Removed – Explores from a 10-year-old child’s point of view of the emotional journey of being taken from her home and placed in the foster care system.
Removed Part 2: Remember My Story – Stuck in the abyss of the foster care system, Zoe’s life finally begins to move forward until unexpectedly what she holds dearest is taken away from her yet again and she is left to pick up the pieces of her tender heart.
Navigating Child Sex Abuse
A Resource for Survivors and Their Loved Ones
Adoption
Videos on Adoption
Struggle for Identity: Issues in Transracial Adoption – A thought- provoking 20-minute video presenting a group of adoptees who discuss their experiences growing up in transracial adoptive families. They delve into complex issues such as confronting stereotypes, fitting in with their culture of origin and learning to define themselves in terms of race and culture.”
Child Welfare
Books on Child Welfare
A Child’s Journey Through Placement by: Dr. Vera Fahlberg – Although much is available in the child welfare literature about families and casework processes and procedures, there is little literature available that has the child as its primary focus. This book focuses on a child’s feelings, needs, and behaviors once the decision has been made to place the child in foster care.”
Videos on Child Welfare
Foster – This film features numerous individuals in the foster care system; however, the inspiration for this film started with just one child.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Books on ACEs
Childhood Disrupted: How your biography becomes your biology, and how you heal by Donna Jackson Nakazawa – Your biography becomes your biology. The emotional trauma we suffer as children not only shapes our emotional lives as adults, but it also affects our physical health, longevity, and overall wellbeing. Scientists now know on a bio-chemical level exactly how parents’ chronic fights, divorce, death in the family, being bullied or hazed, and growing up with a hypercritical, alcoholic, or mentally ill parent can leave permanent, physical fingerprints on our brains. When children encounter sudden or chronic adversity, stress hormones cause powerful changes in the body, altering the body s chemistry. The developing immune system and brain react to this chemical barrage by permanently resetting children’s stress response to high, which in turn can have a devastating impact on their mental and physical health as they grow up. Donna Jackson Nakazawa shares stories from people who have recognized and overcome their adverse experiences, shows why some children are more immune to stress than others, and explains why women are at particular risk.
Click here to purchase from Thriftbooks.com
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com
The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity – Dr. Nadine Burke Harris was already known as a crusading physician delivering targeted care to vulnerable children. But it was Diego — a boy who had stopped growing after a sexual assault — who galvanized her journey to uncover the connections between toxic stress and lifelong illnesses.
The stunning news of Burke Harris’s research is just how deeply our bodies can be imprinted by ACEs—adverse childhood experiences like abuse, neglect, parental addiction, mental illness, and divorce. Childhood adversity changes our biological systems and lasts a lifetime. For anyone who has faced a difficult childhood, or who cares about the millions of children who do, the fascinating scientific insight and innovative, acclaimed health interventions in The Deepest Well represent vitally important hope for preventing lifelong illness for those we love and for generations to come.
Videos on ACEs
Ted Talk – How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime. Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up. Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain.
Cultural Awareness
Books on Cultural Awareness
Racism without Racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the U.S. by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva – Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s acclaimed Racism without Racists documents how, beneath our contemporary conversation about race, there lies a full-blown arsenal of arguments, phrases, and stories that whites use to account for—and ultimately justify—racial inequalities. The fifth edition of this provocative book makes clear that color-blind racism is as insidious now as ever. It features new material on our current racial climate, including the Black Lives Matter movement; a significantly revised chapter that examines the Obama presidency, the 2016 election, and Trump’s presidency; and a new chapter addressing what readers can do to confront racism—both personally and on a larger structural level.
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com
Mama’s Boy: Preacher’s Son by Kevin Jennings – Growing up poor in the South, Kevin Jennings learned a lot of things, especially about how to be a real man. When his father, a fundamentalist preacher, dropped dead at his son’s eighth birthday party, Kevin already knew he wasn’t supposed to cry. He also knew there was no salvation for homosexuals, who weren’t “real men”—or Christians, for that matter. But Jennings found his salvation in school, inspired by his mother. Self-taught, from Appalachia, her formal education had ended in sixth grade, but she was determined that her son would be the first member of their extended family to go to college, even if it meant going North. Kevin, propelled by her dream, found a world beyond poverty. He earned a scholarship to Harvard and there learned not only about history and literature, but also that it was possible to live openly as a gay man. But when Jennings discovered his vocation as a teacher and returned to high school to teach, he was forced back into the closet. He saw countless teachers and students struggling with their sexual orientation and desperately trying to hide their identity. For Jennings, coming out the second time was more complicated and much more important than the first—because this time he was leading a movement for justice.
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com
Killers of the Flower Moon: In 1897 oil was discovered on the Osage Indian Reservation and by 1920 the oil had brought much wealth to the Osage Tribe. Believing the Osage would not be able to manage their new wealth, or lobbied by whites who wanted a piece of the action, the United States Congress passed a law in 1921 which required that courts appoint guardians for each Osage of half-blood or more in ancestry, who would manage their royalties and financial affairs until they demonstrated “competency.” Under the system, even minors who had less than half-Osage blood had to have guardians appointed, regardless of whether the minors had living parents. The courts appointed the guardians from local white lawyers or businessmen. The incentives for criminality were overwhelming—such guardians often maneuvered legally to steal Osage land, headrights, or royalties. Others were suspected of murdering their charges to gain the headrights. There were an estimated 60 wealthy Indigenous people who were disappeared and murdered in Osage County—most of which were never solved or prosecuted. Click here to purchase from Amazon
Videos on Cultural Awareness
Foster Care’s Invisible Youth – Seven LGBTQ youth from the foster care system share their stories. Failed by their families, these young people go on to face rejection from foster families, invisibility within the system and incredible obstacles to healthy development.
Systemic Racism – Four dimensions of racism and how to be part of the solution. (7 mins)
Webinars on Cultural Awareness
San Francisco CASA – Racism in the Child Welfare System, David Noble and Brisia Gutierrez, Alliance for Children’s Rights 2021.
Podcasts on Cultural Awareness
Systemic racism and harm to communities (7 mins)
Domestic Violence
Books on Domestic Violence
Lizzy Lives in An Angry House by: Karen Addison – This practical resource will help countless children, families and trusted adults make sense of an angry parent, show how to love them and still be able to stand up and speak up, and teach ways to keep themselves safe.
Videos on Domestic Violence
Private Violence Presents: Why We Stayed – A video about why women stay in abusive relationships. Beverly Gooden confronts the question, “why doesn’t she just leave” by interviewing survivors and hearing from their own voice the impact abuse had on their lives. Click here to watch video
Impact of Domestic Violence on Children – This film addresses the impact of domestic violence on children. Research shows those impacts can last a lifetime. Children exposed to violence in the home often experience psychosomatic illnesses, depression, and suicidal tendencies. Later in life, these children are at greater risk for substance abuse, teen pregnancy, and criminal behavior than those raised in homes without violence. Click here to watch video
Foster Care & the Juvenile Justice System
Books
I Speak for This Child: True Stories of a Child Advocate – In I Speak For This Child, best-selling novelist Gay Courter recounts her experiences as a Guardian ad Litem, a volunteer court-appointed advocate for children involved in Florida’s court system. Following her first tentative approach to her local Court Appointed Special Advocates program through her more determined efforts, we get an insider’s glimpse on this hidden world and learn what it takes to ensure that America’s most vulnerable citizens are treated with care and respect. Courter’s story is both heartbreaking and heartwarming—and an inspiration for anyone who has ever looked up from a newspaper and wondered, “What can I do to help?”
Click here to purchase the book from Amazon.com
Click here to purchase the book from Thriftbooks.com
Somebody Else’s Children: The Courts, The Kids, and The Struggle to Save America’s Troubled Families – With the narrative force of an epic novel and the urgency of first-rate investigative journalism, this important book delves into the daily workings and life-or-death decisions of a typical American family court system. It provides an intimate look at the lives of the parents and children whose fate it decides. A must-read for social workers, attorneys, judges, foster parents, child advocates, teachers, journalists, and anyone who cares about our nation’s children.
Videos
Congratulations, you’re on your own: Life after foster care – This documentary follows young adults going through the process of finding their way after foster care. Through youth telling their stories, and also by hearing from professionals in the field, it explains how children enter the foster care system, what happens while they are there, and especially the hardships they face as they transition out of it.
Education
Books on Education
Helping Foster Children in School: A Guide for Foster Parents, Social Workers and Teachers by: John DeGarmo – This book explores the challenges that foster children face in schools and offers positive and practical guidance tailored to help the parents, teachers and social workers supporting them.
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com
Click here to purchase from barnesandnoble.com
Videos on Education
Ted Talk: Foster Care to College: A Crisis WE Can Solve – Foster youth who exit the system at 18 have less than a 4% chance to ever complete college. There is a 25% chance they will be homeless. Higher education administration and faculty need to be part of the solution by rethinking local engagement in order to help this group of youth be prepared, apply, and complete college. Click here to watch video
PPTs on Education
Supporting the Educational Needs of
Students in Foster Care PowerPoint by Alicia Rozum, PCOE.
Local Resources
Placer County Child & Families Resource Guide
2020 Assistance Resource List
KidsFirst Resource Guide
County of Placer Community Resources
211 Connecting Point
Human Trafficking
Books on Human Trafficking
Sex Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation: Prevention, Advocacy, and Trauma Informed Practice by Lara B. Gerassi and Andrea J. Nichols – Analyses the current research and best practices for working with children, adolescents, and adults involved in sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation (CSE). With a unique, research-based focus on practice, the book synthesizes the key areas related to working with victims of sex trafficking/CSE, including prevention, identification, practice techniques, and program design.
Click here to purchase from Thriftbooks.com
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com
Renting Lacy: A Story of America’s Prostituted Children by Linda Smith – To millions of Americans, the trafficking of children for commercial sexual purposes only happens somewhere else – in Southeast Asia or Central America – not on Main Street USA. Yet, it is abundantly clear that today at least 100,000 children are being used as commodities for sale or trade in cities across the nation. These kids are 21st Century slaves. They cannot walk away.
Click here to purchase from Thriftbooks.com
Videos on Human Trafficking
Selling the Girl Next Door – This documentary takes viewers into the world of underage American girls caught up in the violent sex trade. Hundreds of thousands of girls under the age of 18 are ensnared into lives of prostitution annually, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Many are runaways or “throwaways” trapped in “the oldest profession” by pimps who sell them using modern sales and marketing techniques. Click here to watch video
Mental Health
Books on Mental Illness
The American Epidemic: Solutions for Over-Medicating Our Youth by Dr. Frank J. Granett – provides new knowledge for parents, educators, all healthcare professionals, and public health policymakers to determine the cause of behavioral symptoms prior to psychoactive drug therapy in children.
Videos on Mental Illness
Medicating Kids – This documentary examines the dramatic increase in the prescription of behavior-modifying drugs for children. Are these medications really necessary—and safe—for young children, or merely a harried nation’s quick fix for annoying, yet age-appropriate, behavior? Click here to watch video
LGBTQAI+
Books on LGBTQAI+
Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan – Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising their beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined that she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in and taking over her father’s beekeeping business.
Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start.
And for just a short while, these new beginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. With Ash, she feels happy for the first time. Yet at times, she wonders if she can trust him completely…
Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge the flashes of his father’s temper in Ash, and as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her.
Mad Honey is a riveting novel of suspense, an unforgettable love story, and a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves.
Videos on LGBTQAI+
Growing Up Trans – Just a generation ago, it was adults, not kids, who changed genders. But today, many children are transitioning, too — with new medical options, and at younger and younger ages. In Growing Up Trans, FRONTLINE takes viewers on an intimate and eye-opening journey inside the struggles and choices facing transgender kids and their families. Click here to watch video
Sexual Abuse
Books on Sexual Abuse
I Never Told Anyone by Ellen Bass – Deeply moving testimonies by women survivors of child sexual abuse.
Click here to purchase from Thriftbooks.com
Videos on Sexual Abuse
Leaving Neverland – A two-part documentary exploring the separate but parallel experiences of two young boys, James Safechuck at age 10 and Wade Robson at age 7, both of whom were befriended by Michael Jackson. The film crafts a portrait of sustained abuse and examines the complicated feelings that led both men to confront their experiences after becoming fathers themselves. Click here to watch video
Trauma
Books on Trauma
The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk – This book uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Click here to purchase from Thriftbooks.com Click here to purchase from Amazon.com
Children Who See Too Much: Lessons from the Child Witness to Violence Project by Betsy McAlister Groves – For the last ten years Betsy Groves has been working with children traumatized by witnessing violence. In this book she shows how children understand, respond to, and are affected by violence, especially domestic violence. Groves makes the powerful case that traumatic events carried out by family members carry the most severe psychological risks for very young children. She uses clinical case studies to show that being young does not protect against the lasting effects of witnessing violence, and she offers ways adults can help. Click here to purchase from Thriftbooks.com Click here to purchase from Amazon.com
Videos on Trauma
Paper Tigers – The principal of Lincoln High School changes his school’s approach to discipline to help students overcome traumatic events. Click here to watch video
Reproductive & Sexual Health
Webinars
CalSWEC online curriculum for Sexual and Reproductive Wellness in Foster Care:
Click here to watch webinar
San Francisco CASA – Body Safety for Children: Click here to watch webinar
Substance Abuse
Books on Substance Abuse
Beautiful Boy by David Sheff – A teenager’s addiction from the parent’s point of view: a real-time chronicle of the shocking descent into substance abuse and the gradual emergence into hope. Click here to purchase from Thriftbooks.com Click here to purchase from Amazon.com
Dope Sick by Beth Macy – Chronicles America’s more than twenty-year struggle with opioid addiction, from the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, through the spread of addiction in distressed communities in Central Appalachia, to the current national crisis. Click here to purchase from Thriftbooks.com Click here to purchase from Amazon.com
Healing the Shame that Binds You (Recovery Classics) – “I used to drink,” writes John Bradshaw, “to solve the problems caused by drinking. The more I drank to relieve my shame-based loneliness and hurt, the more I felt ashamed.” Shame is the motivator behind our toxic behaviors: compulsion, co-dependency, addiction and the drive to super-achieve that breaks down families and destroys personal lives. This book has helped millions identify their personal shame, understand its underlying causes, address those root issues, and release themselves from the shame that binds them to past failures. Click here to purchase from Amazon.com Click here to purchase from Thriftbooks.com
Videos on Substance Abuse
Hey Charlie – This video is told from the perspective of a teenager and his family and shows how quickly the use of banned substances in social situations almost seamlessly spirals into an addiction to opiates. Click here to watch video
Breaking Points – Includes candid perspectives from high-school and college students, as well as nationally recognized experts, challenging the misperceived “safety” and effectiveness of using prescription stimulants without a doctor’s prescription. It serves as a catalyst to inform discussions about what parents and communities can do to support teens struggling to manage stress. Click here to watch video
TED Talk: Everything you know about addiction is wrong by Johann Hari – What really causes addiction—to everything from cocaine to smartphones? And how can we overcome it? Johann Hari has seen our current methods fail firsthand, as he has watched loved ones struggle to manage their addictions. He started to wonder why we treat addicts the way we do—and if there might be a better way. As he shares in this deeply personal talk, his questions took him around the world and unearthed some surprising and hopeful ways of thinking about an age-old problem. Click here to watch video
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