Batesville, In. — Southern Indian Voices for Children earned a $20,000 grant from National CASA and to facilitate volunteer classes and will soon open an office in the Batesville area.
The cases of child abuse have more than doubled in the past two years for Jefferson County. Ripley County numbers have more than tripled in 3 years – going from 50 in 2014 to 152 in 2017. Officials say there are 232 children on the CASA waiting list.
This grant was written for increased staff for increased recruitment and support for Jefferson volunteers since we won the VOCA federal grant in 2016 that we applied 100% to add a similar staff member in Ripley County. We plan to continue to look for ways to increase our funding, therefore increasing our staff and volunteers – and most importantly –children served.
More exciting news for Ripley county – we are excited to announce we will be opening our doors to an office in Ripley county as of February 1. We will be located in the Rom Weber building in Batesville with myself and our Ripley Volunteer Coordinator spending office hours there every week. In October, our goal is to increase staff there full-time.
