Coming from an adoptive family, Jennifer Hillard found a passion from her past

Jennifer Hillard’s family was in the process of becoming a foster family with the intention to adopt, but she was not having any of it.

Hillard remembers being blunt with the social worker when she was 8 years old, saying, “No, I don’t want a child to come into our house.”

In retrospect, Hillard is grateful the social worker did not listen. Her brother was officially adopted in 2001, about a year and a half after he first stepped into their home.

What 8-year-old Hillard didn’t understand then was how adopting her younger brother would impact her own life and her family. It opened her eyes to the world of foster care and sparked a passion and career she found years later. It allowed her to see the child welfare system through her own personal lens and help children navigate its various facets, such as foster care and child protective services, with a deep understanding and empathy for families facing what hers did — or worse.

That spark came in 2010 when Hillard was in her second semester at Denison University in Ohio, going through the sorority recruitment process. She came across Court Appointed Special Advocates, or CASA, an organization supported in part through philanthropic efforts by Kappa Alpha Theta, and she felt something familiar from her past.

“I remember [the sorority] talking about CASA, and they explained that it’s volunteers who represent children who have been abused or neglected [and are going through] the judicial system,” Hillard says. “I, at that point, had no idea about child protective services, but I did know about foster care because my family was an adoptive family.”

Since its founding four decades ago, the program has transformed how court systems handle cases involving vulnerable children experiencing abuse and neglect. In 2016 alone, the organization supported 280,316 children across the country. In Wisconsin, the Wisconsin CASA Association has nine locations and serves 12 counties.

The organization was founded in 1977 by a judge in Seattle who thought there needed to be a voice in the legal system dedicated solely to the child. Unlike the child’s lawyer or social worker, who both serve crucial roles in the case, the advocate’s only duty is to serve the child and assure his or her thoughts and feelings are being heard in the courtroom.

A 1999 report in the Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal showed that children with advocates are more likely to spend less time in the foster care system and reach desirable permanency plans. Evidence also suggests children with an advocate receive more services while in the system and perform better in school.

Although Hillard’s brother didn’t have an advocate during his adoption process as far as she was aware, she had some understanding of abuse and neglect, the foster care system and the concept of speaking with a social worker. Beyond this, however, her exposure to the system and its resources was limited.

Through Kappa Alpha Theta, Hillard learned about CASA’s importance. She had an immense passion and love for children dealing with abuse and neglect because of her past, and getting the opportunity to support the organization was instrumental in her decision to join the sorority.

Hillard was familiar with the hardships children faced during the adoption process. For her family, adopting a child came with great joy and love, but it also caused tension and fighting between family members. She remembers feeling the need to protect her brother and serve as a caregiver at times.

“You’re taking on a child who has been potentially neglected and abused, and you’re placing them with complete strangers,” Hillard says. “It really does rock everybody’s worlds.”

With an eagerness and dedication to help children in situations similar to her brother’s, Hillard spent four years fundraising for CASA through Kappa Alpha Theta. The sorority’s chapters across the country donate to both their local organization as well as the national organization.

After completing a degree in communication with an emphasis on interpersonal communication at Denison in 2013, Hillard went straight back to school for her master’s degree in social work at UW–Madison, focusing on children and families. The internships Hillard held in graduate school shaped her career.

She first started at The Road Home, an organization in Dane County dedicated to ending child and family homelessness. She worked in case management and located stable housing for families. Many of the clients Hillard worked with at The Road Home had been in foster care themselves or had been involved in the child welfare system.

Time after time, Hillard found herself in contact with foster care and child protective services.

“I knew in the back of my mind that foster care was really my passion, but at the same time, because of my personal experiences, I was a little anxious to dip my toe in that,” Hillard says.

Despite her apprehension, she continued working in the system. Fifteen years after Hillard’s family adopted her brother, she found herself on the other side of the equation, locating the best fit for foster kids and families in need.

Her next graduate school internship was at Lutheran Social Services in Janesville. She was offered a social work job following graduation where she managed cases and foster care placements for the agency.

Social workers serve a crucial role that is different from advocates. Social workers are employed by agencies and work on as many as 45 cases at a time — far more cases than the advocates, who typically only have one. Ellen Smith, a clinical associate professor in the UW–Madison School of Social Work and former member of the Dane County CASA Advisory Board, notes the importance of the weekly visits advocates can offer a child that a social worker cannot. The heavy caseload and lack of resources and funding in the child welfare system prohibit social workers from the consistency that advocates can provide.

Hillard, already familiar with the benefits of the organization because of her college experience, felt like fate was intervening when she came across a job opening at Dane County CASA in the Canopy Center on her very first search.

The Canopy Center is located on the east side of Madison and serves as a “child abuse treatment and prevention center.” It houses three programs, including Dane County CASA, all of which support children and families. The additional programs are Oasis, for families dealing with sexual abuse and incest; and Parent to Child, a program designed to support the relationship between parents and their children through home visits and in-house sessions at the Canopy Center.

Hillard started at Dane County CASA in November 2016 as a case coordinator. She supports the volunteers in various endeavors, such as helping with legal paperwork, advocacy efforts and general guidance. Hillard explains many of the volunteers are not coming from any sort of legal or social work background, so she offers direction as to what services are available and can be recommended by the advocate for the child. Currently, she oversees 23 cases, and her supervisor, Meaghan Henry, program director at Dane County CASA, also oversees cases.

Dane County CASA serves around one-third of the children in the child welfare system in Dane County. In 2016, the organization received the Victims of Crime Act grant, which allowed the program to increase its staff size with the goal of expanding their service to one-half of the children who need service in Dane County. In reality, Henry notes the true goal is to serve all of the children in need of their assistance. However, Smith explains, there are always more people willing to be volunteers than the organization has the resources to train them.

While resources may prevent CASA from supporting all of the children in need, Smith says, “No one has ever said, ‘This isn’t a good idea.’ Whenever we’ve been able to provide the resources, there is very little resistance even for the most part on the part of the social workers … because sometimes the CASA does have a recommendation that is different from what the county human services person is recommending.”

The dedicated volunteers are the driving force behind the organization in the community. In Dane County, the advocates spend between 10 and 15 hours a month between visits with the child and working on the case. The role also requires emotional energy. Hillard says it can be very hard to stop thinking about the case and child outside of work hours.

The volunteers also play a role in spreading the mission of CASA by sharing their work with friends and family. The organization depends on community members caring about the health of children and families around them, and it works to ensure these issues do not get ignored. Hillard finds people often think of abuse and neglect as uncomfortable topics to discuss, but that does not mean they should go unnoticed.

Hillard’s personal story allows her to approach her work with compassion and understanding.

“Especially children who have been through anything — abuse and neglect, hearing fighting, seeing a sibling be hurt, being separated from a sibling — it’s so much easier for me to kind of put myself in their position, because I get what it feels like to be a scared kid,” she says. “You never forget that feeling.”

Emily Holzberg is a junior, but is graduating in May 2018. She hails from Westchester, New York, and is studying journalism with a focus in strategic communication, and will earn a certificate in digital studies. Her dream job is working in account planning and strategy at a large creative agency in New York City or being the next Elle Woods.

Aside from strategic communication, Emily is passionate about working with individuals with disabilities and hopes to continue this work well-beyond college. Though it takes Emily over a year to finish anything on Netflix, some of her favorites include Parenthood and Mad Men.