By Erica Fischer-Kaslander
Executive Director
It’s now officially been one month since my children have gone to school, one month since I sent CASA staff home to operate remotely and one month since we’ve lost our sense of normalcy.
By the week of March 12, I had already been paying attention to the spread of COVID-19 for more than a month. It appeared on my radar in January, when I attended the International Child Maltreatment Conference in San Diego, along with 6 other CASA staff, at the same time that first case was diagnosed in California. We had the idea that it may eventually come to New Jersey and by February we had begun to develop operational contingency plans. But despite that preparation, even as I sat in our training room on March 11, 2020 to give instructions to my staff of 15 about our plan moving forward, I was scared. There was no playbook for leading through a pandemic. They had questions I couldn’t answer and I was flying by the seat of my pants. I was pretending to be confident in my decisions and trying to instill confidence in my team who are exceptionally talented on a good day, but a pandemic had rendered even them human.
Those who’ve known me for a while know that I have an unwanted reputation among my family and friends for being the queen of crisis management. I’m the one who steps in when the crazy gets crazier or when bad gets worse with the ability to be calm and plan methodically. I’ve somehow ended up the designated funeral planner, healthcare decision maker, natural disaster expert, and so much more. When the stakes are high, it seems to be my comfort zone. I expected my ability to be the same for this COVID-19 pandemic but I have to say I was wrong. For the first time, I was out of my comfort zone. I questioned myself, I questioned my team, and I questioned the authorities.
A month later, I realize that it’s ok.
It’s ok to be uncomfortable right now because no one knows what to do. No one knows the answer and this isn’t anyone’s comfort zone. Just like our healthcare system, governing bodies, and others, I’ve made and changed policies for our CASA staff and advocates umpteenth times since March 12. And that’s ok. Change is hard and this many changes so rapidly is exponentially harder. Some people accept and roll with change better than others but regardless it’s ok to not be ok.
More than ever, I’ve learned an important part is to communicate when you are uncomfortable so others around you can support you and understand. After sharing a particularly trying decision around our ability to visit children face to face, knowing that this decision would impact the safety and welfare of hundreds of children, I broke into tears. For 13 years, I had preached about the importance of regular face-to-face contact, and now I just sent out the complete opposite message, telling our team they shouldn’t visit our children in person. It felt like treason to my own values. One of my colleagues came up with the simple reassuring words of “You did great. That was the right call.” I will always be grateful for that moment. In a split second I taught myself vulnerability is good, and reassurance for each other is even more important than ever. We are all in this together.
In this last month, I’ve learned a lot about myself, my colleagues, and our work. Passaic County CASA was born 13 years ago at my hand-me-down beat up kitchen table. I worked for months to get our first office space and was so excited when we had a “real” office to go to. It was then that I felt like the agency was real and had risen from a thought to a reality. Now, 13 years later, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that brought Passaic County CASA back home. We forwarded the mail to my home, the phones to each staff member’s cell phone, and set up the remote login to our server. The operational heartbeat of Passaic County CASA is now scattered across Northern New Jersey in 15 different locations. Yes, there are definitely things we aren’t able to do but we’ve found a way to do just about everything else. Virtual trainings, telephonic court hearings, FaceTime home visits, Zoom staff meetings and more. Now after a month of remote pandemic operations, and thirteen years after leaving home the first time, I have realized the office was never what made us “real” to begin with. It’s always been our people.
Through it all we have stayed connected and encouraging, always checking in, cheering each other on, and laughing when we thought maybe we wanted to cry. It is the people of our child welfare world here in Passaic County that make this crazy system work--our own CASA staff, our volunteers, our Judges, our attorneys, our DCPP caseworkers and managers, and our amazing community partners. This pandemic month has broken down the walls of offices and somehow brought us closer than ever. Now don’t get me wrong, I wish this pandemic had never happened to begin with. However, under the circumstances, I couldn’t ask for a better result. We’ve gained friendships and partnerships, built stronger relationships across the distance, and been more creative than ever in our tireless goal of ensuring children’s best interests are met. It’s only been one month but it’s clear that the lessons I’ve learned will stay with me long after COVID-19 is gone.