Books for CASA volunteers, social workers & foster parents

If you advocate for kids in care, you already know the case file never tells the whole story. These are the books that help fill in what the paperwork leaves out — what it actually feels like from inside the system.

Memoirs written from inside the system

Nothing builds empathy faster than a first-person account. My own memoir, Resilient: A Story of Group Home Survival, traces twelve years moving through Orange County group homes and what the kindness of a few adults made possible. Many CASAs and social workers keep a copy in the office to lend to the youth on their caseload — and I'll send one free to anyone doing this work who asks. Other widely read memoirs in this space include Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter and A Child Called "It" by Dave Pelzer.

Understanding trauma and the developing brain

To advocate well, it helps to understand why a kid in survival mode behaves the way they do. The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog by child psychiatrist Bruce D. Perry is a frequent recommendation — it explains, through real cases, how early trauma shapes the brain and what genuinely helps a child recover. It reframes "difficult" behavior as adaptation, which changes how you show up at every visit.

Why this reading matters for advocates

A CASA or caseworker who has sat with these stories listens differently. You ask better questions, you catch what a kid isn't saying, and you stay when staying is hard. For a child who has watched adults come and go, that steadiness is sometimes the whole intervention.