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By: Amanda Desmarais
Alan Stein was not going to accept “just going through the motions” when it came to doing what he felt was in the best interests of a baby in foster care. As a Guardian ad Litem volunteer with Court Appointed Special Advocates of NH (CASA), he was in the courtroom to speak for a child who couldn’t.
During his career as a family doctor, Alan said he often saw children with needs and knew he wanted to volunteer in retirement. With CASA, he’s experienced firsthand the difference that one voice – in this case, his voice – can make.
He got the call offering him his first case one day after completing his training. A baby had been born substance exposed.
CASA’s goal is for children to return to their parents. If, after all efforts are exhausted and reunification isn’t safe and possible, then other options – such as adoption – are considered.
In this case, Alan noted, the mother faced significant challenges from the start. Alan said that while she tried, she failed to make progress on her sobriety and finding suitable housing: “She was too deep in being unhoused and in her substance misuse.”
The baby was immediately placed into foster care with a woman who had a wealth of foster and adoptive experience. She reached out to the mother, sent pictures, and told her they could arrange visits, but the mother did not follow through. The biological father had grown up in the foster system, and while he did not want his child to experience the same fate, he had his own struggles and was unable to care for the baby, either.
One day at court, next steps were being discussed that would give the father more time to show he could safely reunify with his daughter, but the case had stretched on for over a year and a half. It was then that Alan felt that some parties in the case were “just going through the motions” of following procedural steps, and he needed to say something.
“It was obvious to me this man wasn’t going to make it,” Alan said about the father. “I got up and said: ‘Your Honor, this seems very unlikely. Would the court move for early termination?’” An early termination meant the father’s parental rights would end and the baby could be placed for adoption. People involved in the case had struggled to make consistent contact with the father or establish whether it was safe to reunite the baby with him, so the court agreed.
More than two years after Alan received that initial phone call, the child’s adoption day arrived. Her forever home would be with her dedicated foster mother. The courtroom was packed with almost 100 guests, including the foster mother’s family and her friends from the foster care and adoptive communities. Alan had asked his advocate supervisor – a CASA staff member who supports CASA volunteers throughout a case – for advice about what to say in court that day. She told him that often CASAs simply thank people who were involved with the case, but added that he could say what he wanted.
“That just didn’t seem enough for the foster mother, who was so remarkable, so I wrote a three-to-five-minute speech,” he said. “I told the story to the court, especially how much she loved the biological mom, when it wasn’t required. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”
Later, Alan worked on another case that happily ended with the mother and child reunifying, and he is working on a third. He said he keeps busy in his retirement, but being a CASA has enough flexibility that it works for him to be a volunteer.
“The rewards are pretty internal,” he said, and his motivation is simple: “I do this because I think it’s important.”
To learn more about volunteering with CASA of NH, sign up for a virtual information session at www.casanh.org/infosessions.
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