Date

12-2020

Document Type

Capstone Project (Open Access)

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

Department

Health, Human Services and Public Policy

Major

Collaborative Health and Human Services: Social Work

First Advisor

Jim Raines

Abstract

The mission of the Court Appointed Special Advocates of Santa Cruz (CASA) program is to provide children in the foster care system a volunteer advocate who spends time with the child to ensure they are receiving the services they need (CASA of Santa Cruz County, 2019). The problem addressed is the high volume of foster children in Santa Cruz county and the three causes of the problem are substance abuse, poverty, and abuse and neglect. The consequences are how abuse affects a foster child’s mental health, what it means to be a dual-status youth (a child involved in the welfare and juvenile system), and discussion on the cycle of abuse (an abused child becomes an abusive parent). The barrier of delivery in services is the cultural differences between advocates and foster child therefore the “For Advocates” page will be updated so that it is organized, easily accessible, informational resourceful. Compared to the pre-test where 70.8% of advocates stated that it was fairly easy to find the content they are looking for with the old design and 29.2% who found this “sometimes easy”, in the post-test, 100% of respondents found the new design and content “fairly easy” to navigate. It is recommended that CASA of Santa Cruz hire a person who will be in charge of keeping the website and all the content up to date in order to make it easily accessible for advocates.

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