The hallway outside the juvenile courtrooms on East Fourth Street smells like floor wax and old paper. There’s a row of hard chairs against the wall, a vending machine that takes exact change, and — most mornings — a nine-year-old sitting with a backpack in his lap, waiting for adults to finish deciding things about him.
Marisol has learned to sit down next to that chair instead of standing over it.
“The first time, I stood,” she says. “I had my folder and my notes and I was so ready to be professional. He wouldn’t look at me. Took me three visits to figure out that everybody in his life talks to him from above.”
Marisol is 41. She works in benefits administration for a company uptown, drives a Honda with 130,000 miles on it, and has spent the last two years as a court-appointed advocate for children in Mecklenburg County’s child welfare system. She is not a lawyer or a social worker. She had no experience with any of this before she filled out an application on her couch on a Sunday night.
If you’ve been searching for how to become a CASA volunteer in Charlotte, NC, there’s one thing you need to know before anything else. Almost nobody says it plainly.
In North Carolina, “CASA” has a different name
Search court appointed special advocate Charlotte and you’ll land on national pages — the big umbrella organization, generic “what is a CASA” explainers, a few directory stubs listing an organization and a phone number and nothing else. You’ll read about CASA programs in Texas and Arizona and Ohio. Then you’ll try to find the Charlotte chapter and hit a wall.
Here’s why. North Carolina doesn’t run its child advocacy program through a network of local CASA nonprofits. It runs it through the state court system, and it calls the role Guardian ad Litem — GAL for short. Same job. Same national training curriculum. Different name, and a different front door.
So when people ask how to become a child advocate in Charlotte, the honest first answer is: look for a different acronym. The role is the same one you read about; the paperwork says Guardian ad Litem.
The Latin helps: ad litem means “for the case.” A guardian for the case. Not a foster parent, not a guardian of the child in any permanent sense — an adult assigned to one child’s court proceeding whose entire job is that child’s best interest.
One practical note that will save you a dead end: the old district-specific site, volunteerforgal.org, now redirects to the state judicial branch. Start at the Guardian ad Litem volunteer page on nccourts.gov instead.
Mecklenburg County has its own GAL office at 720 East Fourth Street in uptown Charlotte — the same block as the courthouse. Phone: 704-686-0075. That’s your program — the thing the national pages couldn’t point you to.
What the work actually is
A GAL gets involved only in one narrow circumstance: after the county’s Department of Social Services files a petition alleging that a child has been abused, neglected, or is dependent. This isn’t prevention work or outreach. A case has already entered the court system and a judge has appointed you to it.
From there, your job is to find out the truth of that child’s life and tell the court about it.
For Marisol, that has meant:
Visiting the child, regularly, wherever he is — a relative’s apartment in east Charlotte, then a foster placement in Matthews, then a different one. Keeping him informed about what’s happening in his own case, in words that fit a fourth grader.
Interviewing everybody. Parents, grandparents, caretakers, the DSS social worker, the therapist, the school counselor, the pediatrician. Reading the file. Reading the file again.
Writing a report for the judge — fact-based, focused on the child, with actual recommendations. Then sitting in the courtroom while a judge reads it.
Testifying, when it’s needed. Making sure the court knows what the child himself wants — even when it isn’t what Marisol is recommending.
Then watching what the court ordered actually happen. Or not happen. And saying so.
There’s a distinction here worth being clear about, because it’s the whole reason the role exists. The DSS social worker represents the Department, which holds legal custody and is juggling safety, services, and a permanent placement. You represent nobody’s caseload and nobody’s budget. You focus entirely on one child. Sometimes you’re the only person in the room who has been to the school and the apartment and the therapist’s office in the same month.
“I found out his little sister was placed forty minutes away and nobody had put a visit on a calendar in eleven weeks,” Marisol says. “That’s not a scandal. That’s just what happens when everybody has forty cases. I had one.”
Do you qualify to be a child advocate in Charlotte?
The bar to serve as a foster child advocate volunteer in Mecklenburg County is lower than most people assume, and stricter in the places that matter.
No special education or professional experience is required. GAL volunteers come from every kind of background — retired teachers, nurses, warehouse supervisors, grad students, accountants.
You need to be an adult. That’s as specific as the program gets — GAL volunteers “are adults,” and no age floor is published beyond that. If you’ve read that CASA volunteers must be 21, that’s some other state’s rule, not North Carolina’s. Eighteen or nineteen and serious? Ask the Mecklenburg office instead of counting yourself out.
The background check is thorough. Expect felony convictions and pending charges, any sex-offense history, the state Sex Offender Registry, and North Carolina’s Responsible Individuals List — the registry of people with substantiated reports of child abuse or serious neglect. The program is screening for risk to children, and it doesn’t hand-wave this part.
And not everyone who applies is accepted. The program says so out loud on its own site, which I respect: given the rigor of the training and the sensitivity of the work, they turn people down. Applying is not the same as being selected.
What they’re actually screening for is harder to put on a checklist — a sincere concern for children’s wellbeing, willingness to give the time, and the ability to stay respectful toward families, service providers, and the court even when a case makes you angry. That last one weeds out more people than the background check does.
CASA training in Charlotte, NC: the 30 hours
Here’s the number that makes people close the tab: 30 hours of training before you’re sworn in.
It’s a real commitment and I won’t dress it up. But two things about it are better than they sound. First, it’s scheduled around working people — usually evenings or weekends, not a Tuesday-through-Friday block you’d have to burn vacation days on. Second, it’s not filler. The curriculum is nationally recognized and it’s teaching you a genuinely unfamiliar world: how juvenile court works, what the statutes require, what your role is and — importantly — what it isn’t.
The full path looks like this:
- Application — submitted online through the state judicial branch’s volunteer page.
- Criminal and other background checks.
- Screening interview — a real conversation, in person.
- 30 hours of intensive, standardized training.
- The oath. You’re sworn in by a judge. Then you get your first case.
You keep training after that, too. In-service sessions continue as long as you serve.
And you are not turned loose alone. Every GAL volunteer is supervised by an experienced staff member you can call any time. An attorney advocate attends every court session with you and is available for legal questions. You are the child’s investigator and voice; you are not expected to be their lawyer.
One more thing that quietly matters: North Carolina law protects volunteers acting in good faith. Under N.C.G.S. § 7B-1204, a volunteer participating in a judicial proceeding isn’t civilly liable for acts or omissions in connection with it, absent gross negligence. People worry about this. It’s a fair thing to worry about, and it has an answer.
The honest answer to “is this too big a commitment?”
The organization pages soft-pedal this. I’d rather give you the numbers.
After training: typically four to eight hours per month. That’s the program’s own figure, and Marisol says it’s accurate for her — with the caveat that it isn’t evenly distributed. The month a placement changes is not a four-hour month.
Most volunteers carry one or two cases, and you decide how many you take. Nobody assigns you a third case you didn’t agree to.
Court dates land roughly every three to six months, depending on the case. That’s the one piece you can’t do on evenings and weekends, and it’s the one conversation you should have with your employer before you apply. Many GAL volunteers work full time. Most of the rest of the work — the calls, the emails, the report writing — happens at night and on Saturdays.
Cases are long. This is the part people underestimate more than the hours. A child’s case can run for a year or more, and the ask is that you stay until there’s a safe, permanent home. Consistency is the service. A kid who has had four social workers and three placements does not need a fourth adult who leaves.
Marisol’s first case closed after nineteen months. Her second is ongoing.
The part that changed her
I asked what she expected going in versus what actually happened.
“I thought I’d be rescuing somebody,” she said. “That’s the fantasy, right? You show up and you fix it.”
What she got instead was smaller and stranger. She got to be the person who remembered — that he was scared of the dentist, that his grandmother’s number changed, that he wanted to be a marine biologist for exactly six weeks last spring. She wrote it down. She said it out loud in a courtroom where everyone else was working from a file.
“There was a hearing where the judge stopped and asked me a direct question, and I answered it, and you could feel the room adjust. Not because I’m impressive. Because I’d been to the house.”
She also learned to sit in the hard chair. Which is not nothing.
If you’re weighing this against other ways to spend a few hours a month with kids who need adults: youth mentoring and volunteer tutoring ask less of you and give back sooner. This one asks more and pays out later. Both are real service. Never volunteered anywhere before? Our guide to getting started with community service is a gentler on-ramp. (A Charlotte-wide volunteering guide is in the works — that link will live here when it’s published.)
If 30 hours isn’t your season
Some people read this and know it’s theirs. Others realize the honest answer is not right now. Charlotte has other doors — all three of these are in the list at the bottom of this page.
If you’re an attorney, there’s a lane built for you. Charlotte’s children’s legal-advocacy nonprofit, uptown on East Fifth Street, runs a Custody Advocacy Program where volunteer attorneys handle settlement conferences, depositions, motions, and court prep in children’s custody disputes.
If you want to help without a courtroom, the local foster-family support nonprofit on Monroe Road assembles and delivers Welcome Packs for children entering care, cooks meals for foster families in the middle of a placement, and staffs childcare and events. There’s also a self-paced advocacy program for teens, which is a rare and genuinely good thing.
If you can only give a Saturday, the county’s children’s advocacy center runs event committees, snack and toy drives, and a young-professionals group.
None of those require 30 hours. All of them keep a child’s life from getting worse.
Start with one email
Here’s the whole ask. If the 4-to-8-hours-a-month version of this sounds possible, go to the state judicial branch’s GAL volunteer page and start the application. If you’d rather talk to a human in Charlotte first, call the Mecklenburg office at 704-686-0075 or stop by 720 East Fourth Street and ask when the next training cohort starts.
You’ll wait for a background check. You’ll sit through a screening interview. You’ll do thirty hours in a room with strangers who are all a little nervous. Then a judge will swear you in and hand you one child’s file. That’s the whole path to becoming a CASA volunteer in Charlotte, NC — no national hotline, no shortcut, just a local office and a training cohort.
Somewhere in Mecklenburg County there’s a kid in a hard plastic chair with a backpack in his lap, and nobody in the building has asked him what he wants.
Somebody should sit down next to him.
Organizations like this in Charlotte, NC:
1. Council for Children’s Rights Charlotte’s legal-advocacy nonprofit for children, based on East Fifth Street uptown, providing holistic representation for kids across Mecklenburg County. Council for Children’s Rights volunteer roles center on the Custody Advocacy Program, where volunteer attorneys handle settlement conferences, depositions, motions, and court preparation. cfcrights.org/volunteer
2. Foster Village Charlotte Founded in 2018 by four foster parents and now serving hundreds of children and caregivers a year from its Monroe Road location. Volunteers (18+) deliver Welcome Packs to children entering care, cook homemade meals for foster families, and staff the childcare and events team. Also runs a self-paced Community Advocate Program for teens. fostervillagecharlotte.org/volunteer
3. Children’s Advocacy Center of Charlotte Provides a child-first environment for kids who have experienced abuse, and works to break the cycle through training, education, and community outreach. Volunteer roles include event committees, snack and toy drives, a young-professionals group, and university internships. cacclt.org/get-involved/volunteer
4. Thompson Child & Family Focus Serving Charlotte since 1886 across early childhood, family stability, mental health, and residential services, including a foster care program that has grown to hundreds of homes across the Carolinas. Volunteers support child development centers, residential cottages, festivals, and parents’ day out programming. thompsoncff.org/volunteer
5. Alexander Youth Network Charlotte-based since 1946 and a statewide leader in children’s behavioral healthcare, running outpatient, day treatment, residential, and community-based programs from its Thermal Road campus. Volunteer opportunities support the children in its care directly. alexanderyouthnetwork.org
To apply as a Guardian ad Litem — North Carolina’s court appointed special advocate role — start at the North Carolina Judicial Branch GAL volunteer page. The Mecklenburg County GAL office is at 720 E. Fourth St., Charlotte, NC 28202 · 704-686-0075.
Photos: Mecklenburg County Courthouse by City Dweller 2 (CC BY-SA 4.0); courthouse corridor by Ben P L (CC BY-SA 2.0); North Carolina courtroom by Harrison Keely (CC BY 4.0).
