In Hillsborough County alone, there are more than 3,000 children currently in the Dependency (Foster Care) System.
“I am for the Child” is the credo for the Hillsborough County Guardian ad Litem Program — and for Ronda O’Farrell of Sun City Center, it has become the cornerstone of her life.
“As a retired person, this program has given me focus and meaning in my life,” said O’Farrell, who has been a volunteer with GAL for more than five years now. “I’m really impressed with the program. They give their volunteers wonderful training and a lot of support, and along with the court and caseworkers, we truly function together as a team.”
In Hillsborough County alone, there are more than 3,000 children (from infants to teens) currently in the Dependency Foster Care System. The Guardian ad Litem Program serves nearly 1,800 of those children, who have been removed from their homes because of abuse, neglect or abandonment. Many of these children feel lost and traumatized as they are separated from their family and placed in the care of strangers. The role of the GAL volunteer is to be someone these children can talk to, someone who will listen to them and speak on their behalf as they navigate through an already over-burdened court system.
Ronda O’Farrell of Sun City Center has been a GAL volunteer for over five years. Lisa Stark photo.
“By the time these kids get into the system, they’ve already been through a lot of trauma,” said Ronda O’Farrell, whose background includes being a social worker in the public school system. “I like working with teens the most,” said O’Farrell, who 40 years ago married a man who had six children that she raised as her own.
“As you know, it’s hard enough being a teenager in today’s world and dealing with normal teenage issues,” said O’Farrell. “Imagine adding physical and emotional abuse to that. A lot of these teens come from homes with parents involved in drugs, criminal activity and domestic abuse. You can see how overwhelming that would be to a child.”
O’Farrell described her most recent case in which she was the advocate for a teenage girl who had witnessed the suicide of her mother at a young age, and spent much of her formative years being shuffled through foster homes in the child welfare system.
“Sometimes I was the only one she had to talk to,” said O’Farrell, who worked with the young girl for four years, building up her self-esteem and showing her the love she was missing at home. “She ran away from one group home after another until finally, at age 17, she was adopted by a loving, stable family. She told me she couldn’t believe she could ever be this happy.”
O’Farrell said she still meets with the “bright young lady” once a month for lunch or dinner, keeping a check on how her life is progressing. “I had to keep convincing her to stay in school because it was the ticket to her future. Now she’s received her GED and wants to continue on to become a doctor!”
A school social worker who worked in 18 different school districts in Illinois, O’Farrell has long had an affinity with disadvantaged children and adults. When finances became tight in the public school sector, she took $5 out of her pocket and started a nonprofit organization that grew to a million-dollar corporation in St. Louis, Mo. Designed to serve adults who were severely physically disabled, the nonprofit sought to teach clients desktop publishing skills, enabling them to move out of nursing homes and live independently on their own.
Now in her retirement years, O’Farrell stays busy with her Guardian ad Litem work, as well as serving as president of her chapter of the Philanthropic Education Organization in Sun City Center, a group that has raised more than $250 million to provide educational scholarships and loans for women. In her spare time, she enjoys engaging in her “passion” — playing and teaching bridge in Sun City Center and on cruise ships for the benefit of fellow travelers.
GAL volunteers discover that in their commitment to improve a child’s life, they’ve also improved their own. O’Farrell urges anyone interested in becoming a GAL volunteer to attend one of the many informational seminars sponsored by the program throughout Hillsborough County.
You need not have any specific qualifications to be a GAL volunteer, said O’Farrell. “You just need to be someone who cares about kids and who will listen to them.”
GAL volunteers come from all walks of life, including real estate agents, business leaders, teachers and retirees. Currently there are more than 700 GAL volunteers in Hillsborough County whose job it is to protect a child’s best interests and make sure they don’t “fall through the cracks” of a less-than-perfect system.
“A lot of people complain about the system, but aren’t willing to step up and try to make a change,” said O’Farrell. “I admit it’s not all peaches and cream because you’re going to see some kids dealing with some pretty gritty situations. But overall, the Guardian ad Litem program does a wonderful job of training and supporting their volunteers.
It only takes between 12 and 15 hours per month to volunteer and “Be the Voice” for a child.
The Guardian ad Litem visits with the child a minimum of once a month and reports observations.
They work with community partners to ensure the child is receiving the assistance and support needed to remain safe, and they advocate for the child and make recommendations to the court for their welfare.
“It’s hard to describe the joy of teaching a child to learn to trust an adult and believe in someone again,” said O’Farrell.
For more information on becoming a Guardian ad Litem volunteer, contact Marilyn Garcia, volunteer recruiter, at 813-307-3585 or check out their website at www.galtampa.org.
