By Riley McCoy
For The Register-Herald
Beckley — April’s Child Abuse Prevention Month puts a sharper public focus on abuse that, advocates warn, doesn’t stop when the calendar turns.
Organizations such as CASA of New River and Just for Kids join in the month’s wider awareness effort through outreach, education and public events. According to organizers, CASA — which stands for court-appointed special advocate — serves children with open abuse and neglect cases through court-appointed advocacy and mentoring that supports their best interests and helps move their cases toward safe, permanent placement.
Meanwhile, Just for Kids operates as a child advocacy center, and provides child forensic interviews, family advocacy, coordination of forensic medical exams, outreach and education, while also responding to child exploitation cases through Project Grace.
West Virginia remains an outlier in child welfare. Federal data show 6,939 children were in foster care in West Virginia as of Sept. 30, 2024, down from 7,105 a year earlier, while 3,822 children entered foster care during 2024.
Federal maltreatment data show 5,110 child maltreatment victims in West Virginia in 2024, a rate of 14.7 per 1,000 children.
CASA of New River Executive Director Kristi Dumas, who holds a doctorate in psychology, said CASA’s role stretches far beyond courtroom appearances, with advocates hat follow children through school, community life and major personal milestones.
CASA volunteers, she said, serve as sworn officers of the court on open abuse and neglect cases, but they also mentor children directly, show up at school functions, birthday parties and other everyday moments that build trust and continuity. That dual role, according to Dumas, helps reduce time in foster care and pushes cases toward safe, permanent placement.
“We have an 85% success rate in terms of cases within six months of CASA having been assigned to the case,” Dumas said. “Most of the cases that we have been assigned to in our infancy as a program have been on those difficult cases that have been open longer than the customary amount of time.”
A 2023 report from the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy said the state placed children into foster care at four times the national per-capita rate and terminated parental rights more often than any other state, at a pace nearly 40 percent faster than the national average.
Dumas explained that many of those cases had already stretched beyond the typical 18-month window before CASA entered the picture, which makes the six-month closure rate especially significant in cases where children had already waited through prolonged instability.
Deanee Johnson, who has a doctorate in child development from Texas Woman’s University, said Just for Kids approaches the issue through a multidisciplinary model that handles child abuse and neglect investigations while also serving as child witnesses to violent crimes.
“Basically, what we do is we function off of a multi-disciplinary team approach to the investigation of child abuse and neglect and we also serve witnesses, child witnesses to violent crimes,” Johnson said. “The services that we offer include child forensic interviewing, family advocacy. We coordinate services for forensic medical exams. We also do community outreach and education programs.”
She added that the center also operates Project Grace which responds to child exploitation and sex trafficking cases. National Children’s Alliance reported children’s advocacy centers served 365,140 children in 2025, underscoring the scale of the system Johnson described.
Johnson said the organization has marked the month in past years with its annual gala, candlelight vigils and pinwheel gardens. This year, instead of planting a large pinwheel garden, Johnson said, the group chose to light Trudy’s House in blue while keeping some pinwheels on site.
“So rather than having a sea of pinwheels, which is a very wonderful visual, [we] decided to light up Trudy’s House in blue light,” Johnson said. “Because when you have as many that, you know, because a lot of times we get the number of pinwheels that represent the number of children that we serve in the community this year, it’s almost almost 300 children, so that’s a lot of pinwheels that are out planted in the ground, and then it just kind of makes a mess sometimes.”
Just for Kids this week received a $15,000 donation from Amazon after the company selected the organization as its nonprofit of choice during a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Beaver. Johnson said the gift came as a surprise and described it as a meaningful show of community support for the center’s work with children and families.
A Kentucky Derby style fundraiser is planned for CASA of New River at the Historic Black Knight on May 2 at 1 p.m. More information can be found at casaofnewriver.org/bet-on-a-childs-future.
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