CASA of the Heartland Executive Director Michelle Kail says expanding to cover a six-county service area has its challenges, but the organization is up to the task, and is still growing in Hardin County.
“We’ve gone from serving about 120 children in our community in 2022 to 185 this last year, so we’ve seen an increase in need and an increase in services, and we’re happy to be able to step up and provide that service and meet that need,” Kail said.
Kail provided an update on the organization to the Elizabethtown City Council during their work session Monday. She said 983 child dependency, neglect, and abuse petitions were received in 2025, with about 60 percent coming from Hardin County. Court-appointed special advocates from the organization served 312 children last year.
Kail said 129 children are currently on the waitlist.
“We’ve seen those numbers steadily increase over the last several years,” Kail said. “When I started, we had about 98 kiddos on the waitlist. We got it down to 50, and we’ve seen a heavy increase in educational neglect cases in the last year and a half, so those numbers have gone back up.”
Kail said in terms of geography CASA of the Heartland covers the fifth-largest region in the state, but in terms of services provided the organization is the third-largest CASA organization in the state. She said the cost of foster care per child for the state is about $2,300 a month, while CASA advocacy per child is about $2,100 a year.
“CASA is a wise investment for our community leaders because the children that we’re working with are reunified or find permanency much more quickly than kiddos without CASA, and that number for us in the last several years has decreased,” Kail said.
Learn more about how to become a CASA, or about other ways to support the organization, at www.casaheartland.org.
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