Saying “Yes” to Children in Foster Care: Celebrating Forty Years of ProKids

CELEBRATING FORTY YEARS OF PROKIDS

By: Sarah L. Flohre

Forty years ago, ProKids was started to advocate for the then four thousand children in the child welfare system in Hamilton County. Frustrated with the number of children needing homes and the length of time a child might stay in foster care in Ohio (at the time ProKids was founded, “the average length of temporary placement was six years,”) Darlene Kamine of the Young Lawyer’s Section of the Cincinnati Bar Association and Judge David Grossman of Hamilton County Juvenile Court designed the project that would become ProKids and approached the Junior League of Cincinnati for support. ProKids assigns a trained volunteer (a Court Appointed Special Advocate or “CASA”) to children who have been adjudicated dependent, abused or neglected. The Junior League contributed $75,000 and agreed to provide the first class of volunteers1 . “The Junior League – they were the first people to say ‘yes’ to our kids,” writes Tracy Cook, current Executive Director of ProKids. “Without them coming forward we may never have launched and been able to grow for the last four decades. Junior League

“The Junior League - they members were also our first class of CASA volunteers and we’re proud to were the first to say ‘yes’ to be a part of Junior League history.” our kids, without them coming forward we may never have And grown they have – in 2020 alone, ProKids served over one thousand launched and been able to grow youth in foster care in Hamilton for the last four decades.” County (Cite: ProKids website). Congratulations to ProKids on four decades of service, and stay tuned for more information on how you can volunteer with ProKids as a CASA as they are planning to host a virtual session for interested Junior Leaguers in the near future. You can also find out more information on their website at www.prokids.org.

1 Cite: ProKids: A Project of the Junior League of Cincinnati