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Pulaski County Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) paid tribute to its late executive director, Darryl Capps, during a pre-dawn breakfast fundraiser Tuesday at First Pentecostal Church in North Little Rock.
More than 150 people attended, CASA officials said.
After highlighting his longstanding commitment to helping neglected and vulnerable children, the child advocacy group awarded Capps its inaugural Lasting Light of Hope Award. Courtney Flynt, his daughter and a member of host congregation, accepted it on the family’s behalf.
The nonprofit organization gave its Champion of CASA Award to the congregation, which has sponsored the Light of Hope Breakfast since 2019.
In the United States, more than 600,000 children are removed from their homes each year due to abuse and neglect. When possible, judges often appoint special advocates who interview the child, their teachers and parents, counselors and others with pertinent knowledge.
Once they finish, they submit a report to the court as it attempts to determine what steps are in the child’s best interest.
Capps, a former Sunday School director and children’s pastor and a gifted puppeteer, died in February at age 58.
He had seen the system firsthand. After his daughter’s birth in 1986, he and his wife, Sandra, had adopted three other children who had gone through foster care.
Starting as a volunteer advocate, Capps was hired as its executive director in 2013, a position he held until his death.
Pulaski Circuit Judge Shawn Johnson, who attended Tuesday’s breakfast, said Capps’ commitment was evident.
“He was a great friend of the courts and of children. He just had a very special dedication to children and that really touched me,” Johnson said.
The organization Capps led finds and equips volunteers in Pulaski and Perry counties (the 6th Judicial District) to assist hundreds of young people whose families are in crisis. Similar programs operate elsewhere in Arkansas and around the country.
CASA makes a “tremendously important” contribution, Johnson said.
“It has to be very helpful for children to know they have someone representing their interests in the court and helping them through it,” he said. “To me, that is what CASA is all about.”
Capps attended Oneness Pentecostal churches, which teach that an individual must repent of their sins, be baptized by immersion in water in the name of Jesus (rather than a Trinitarian formula) and be filled with the Holy Ghost, with the evidence of speaking in tongues, in order to be saved.
He was also director of the dinner theater each Christmas season at New Life Church in Cabot, its pastor, Tim Gaddy, recalled.
“He had a very keen sense of humor. He was very compassionate, and that was obviously true with his secular work there with CASA,” he said. “He was just so well-liked by so many people, and well loved by our church family.”
When First Pentecostal Church, the state’s largest Oneness Pentecostal congregation, learned about CASA’s efforts to help children, they were eager to contribute.
Following Capps’ death, the church’s leaders re-extended their invitation to the group, with Bishop Joel Holmes emphasizing their desire to be of service.
“They are 100% behind us,” said Xanthoula Groom, CASA’s community outreach coordinator and advocate trainer.
“We use this facility free of charge. They cooked this entire meal and helped us serve,” she said. “I have been so impressed by this church and their contributions. [It’s] amazing.”
Food Service Manager Rhonda Graves and other church members began showing up around 4:20 a.m. By 6:30 a.m., an entire team of volunteers was on hand to greet visitors, pour coffee and serve food donated by Ben E. Keith Co. — generous portions of traditional breakfast fare as well as cinnamon rolls and bowls of blackberry cobbler.
During the breakfast and afterward, officials emphasized the need for additional volunteers in the 6th Judicial District.
“In [State Fiscal Year] 2022 there were 1,115 juveniles in foster care in Pulaski and Perry counties,” Pulaski County CASA Executive Director Angie Jones said in an email. “We were only able to serve 237 of those children.”
“We have a vision of eventually serving all of the children who enter foster care. Events like Light of Hope help us draw awareness to the need for more volunteers to become court-appointed special advocates for children in foster care,” she added.
Advocates don’t need past legal training, but they need to be available and reliable.
“We’re hurting for advocates because it’s a lot of commitment — 10 to 15 hours a month,” Groom said. “There’s a lot of training; a big learning curve.”
The program prepares volunteers for the task at hand and empowers them to effectively advocate for those in the foster care system, officials say.
Stanley Barnes, a CASA program director, said volunteers are “a voice for that child who has no one in their corner.”
“We take a look at cases that don’t have CASA workers compared to the cases that do, and it makes a world of a difference,” he said.
More information about CASA, including a volunteer application, is available at pulaskicountycasa.org.
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