Why We’re CAJA, and Not CASA

 Why We’re CAJA, and Not CASA

If you have spent any time reading about child advocacy, you have probably run into the word CASA. And if you have spent any time around the Madison County courthouse, you have probably heard people say CAJA instead. People sometimes assume one of them is a typo.

Neither one is. They are the same idea wearing a different name, and the story behind that is worth a few minutes.

What the letters stand for

CAJA stands for Court Appointed Juvenile Advocates. That is the name of the program here in Madison County.

CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocate, and it is the name most people around the country know. The national organization that supports programs like ours is the National CASA/GAL Association for Children, with the GAL standing for guardian ad litem.

So CAJA and CASA are not competing things. We belong to the same national movement of court-appointed volunteer advocates, and we do that work under Alabama law and Madison County’s court practice. The name is what a local program decided to call itself.

We are not the only ones

This turns out to be pretty common. Programs in the national network go by different names depending on where they are. Many are called CASA. Some operate under a Guardian ad Litem name, which is the role a court appointment often carries. Others go by something else entirely.

The network is large — National CASA/GAL supports member programs with over 79,000 volunteers nationwide. Every state has its own courts, its own child welfare agency, and its own history, so it is not surprising that the names ended up varying.

What does not vary is the model underneath.

What stays the same

Wherever you go, the core of this work looks about the same.

A judge appoints a trained community volunteer to a case involving a child who has experienced abuse or neglect. It is a formal appointment, not an honorary one. That volunteer gets to know the child, learns the case, and then reports to the court on what they have found and what they believe would serve that child best.

Our volunteers come from many different backgrounds, and there is no single one that makes someone good at this. As of 2025 there were more than 155 volunteer advocates serving through CAJA, together logging over 13,500 volunteer hours in that year alone.

Why the local name matters anyway

If the work is the same everywhere, you might reasonably ask why we do not just call ourselves CASA and save everyone the confusion.

The honest answer is that “CASA” was already trademarked and in use elsewhere in Alabama when the child advocacy group was organized in 1989, but the local name reflects something real. This program serves Madison County. The judges who make these appointments sit here. The children we serve go to school here. The volunteers who do this work live here, and many of them signed up because it was their own community they wanted to show up for.

Being part of a national network gives us training standards, curriculum, and a model that has been tested across the country since the movement began in 1977. Being a local program is what makes any of that useful in a Madison County courtroom, for a child who lives here.

Both of those things are true at once, and the two names are a small reminder of it.

If you were looking for CASA

You found the right place. If someone told you about CASA and pointed you to us, or if you searched for a CASA program in Huntsville and landed here, nothing has gone wrong. CAJA is Madison County’s program, and as our own site puts it, we are a “proud member of the Alabama CASA Network and the National CASA/GAL Association.”

And if you have been reading about what these volunteers do and wondering whether it is something you could take on, that is a question we would genuinely like to talk with you about.

Find out what it takes to become a CAJA