Impact: A Message from the Executive Director (June 2025)

Because we can all use a bright spot in our week, I’m bringing you an update on the story of premature triplets to whose case CASA was appointed. CASA’s ‘why’ is advocating for at-risk and maltreated children before the family court system so that they may live in a safe, stable, and loving permanent home. 

In late 2021, a family court judge appointed CASA to the triplets’ case shortly after their birth because they were born at 30-weeks with cocaine in their systems. Their mother sought substance use treatment. She disappeared soon afterwards and had not been seen for more than six months when the court terminated her parental rights a year later. Their father was not present in their lives except for visiting once at the hospital after they were born. 

The triplets are now three and a half years old, and just this past March, their adoption by their foster mother, a cousin to their biological mother, was complete. They are lively active kids who continue to require developmental therapy. There were many fits and starts along the way, including termination of the birth mother’s parental rights, a father who denied parentage and then wanted custody to the father’s non-participation in their lives after a judge gave him the opportunity to do so, and his ultimate loss of parental rights following an appeal that delayed the children’s permanence for an additional nine (9) months. 

Throughout their young lives, CASA has been their constant advocate for permanence and services that would help them thrive. There were multiple delays and seeming unconcern that the kids lingered in foster care. CASA helped secure special strollers, car seats and infant feeders to meet their developmental needs, all while supporting their adoptive relatives as they learned the difficult path to parenting three vulnerable, special needs babies. We fought for permanent placement with the only mother that they knew, their primary healthy attachment figure and the one who provided a consistent, constant, loving home and environment for the triplets.

If were not for CASA’s involvement, it’s likely that the adorable triplets would be lingering in foster care with little concern for having a permanent home. Thanks to donors like you who give hope, stability and support to children who face numerous challenges, the kiddos know they are loved and cared for in the only place they’ve ever called home.

You helped to make this possible! Your impact changed the trajectory of their lives. While not every story turns out this well, this is our ‘why’ and our goal for each CASA kid, a safe, loving and permanent home. 

In gratitude, 

Melissa Protzek, Esq.
Executive Director