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By Emilie Parten, The Roving Reporter
Jenny Bratton is the Executive Director of Child Advocates of Navarro County, an umbrella organization which covers both the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) and the Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC).
She received a bachelor’s degree in history and literature in 1989, teaching for two years before she went back to school and earned her Law Degree in 1994. “I loved every day of law school,” Bratton told the NavCo Chronicle.
She practiced law as a prosecutor in Florida for seven years, specializing in juvenile sex offenders. When she moved to Texas, she took the bar and earned her license to practice here. Her time as a prosecutor, both before and after the establishment of CASA and CAC programs, showed her the impact that the program has on the court system and its young victims. In 2011, she joined the Child Advocates of Navarro County, where she will be celebrating her fourteenth year of service this coming summer.
“This job lets me participate in helping children in a way that few jobs would ever allow,” Bratton stated as she walked me through the differences between CASA and CAC.
The Court Appointed Special Advocates or CASA work through the family court system, with situations that involve a child’s removal from a home, assigning a CASA volunteer who acts as a Guardian ad Litem (GAL) to serve the best interest of the child. The CASA volunteer stays in contact with the child through the entire process, no matter how long or short the case may last. Differing from a case worker, who may have twenty or thirty cases they have to follow and lack the time to give each child the necessary attention, CASA volunteers only have one to three cases and can devote their full attention to each child’s needs. Navarro County in particular, is lucky enough to be able to appoint a CASA volunteer to every single child that enters to court system. Two former volunteers serve as part-time staff members to assist the volunteers throughout the case.
The Children’s Advocacy Center or CAC, on the other hand, works with children that are the victims of sexual abuse, physical abuse, or other violent crimes. They provide forensic interviews, medical exams by nurses specially trained to treat victims of sexual assaults, therapy for both children and parents alike and advocacy. The CAC staff is there with each child through criminal court trials supporting the child through their testimony in front of the accused perpetrator. The CAC staff includes two forensic interviewers, three therapists, and two advocates for children and families.
Each one of these organizations works for children to serve the best interest of the child and to promote justice and healing for the child and the family. In most cases, the two organizations are separate entities with few children in both programs. There are 70 CACs and 75 CASA programs in the great state of Texas. However, Navarro County is one of the rare instances in which both programs share the same building, Executive Director and Board of Directors which saves money for both programs.
Jenny is often questioned on how she can handle hearing the awful stories of what happened to the children that come through the CASA/ CAC programs. She replied, “The bad stuff happened before we got there. We are in the fix-it business, the make-it-better business and that makes it all very worthwhile.”
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