Yes, I’ve talked extensively with people who were CASA workers, about it.
I think it’s a great program that provides a sorely-needed balance to what society offers to troubled families, which is actually probably one of the most important needs our society has, because every severely messed-up person, child or adult, causes all sorts of chaos for all the people around them, and they tend to mess up other people, and it affects practically everything our society does, and it may be the one area with the most need and potential for development. The need is dire, difficult, widespread, and pervades our whole society. It needs every person who is willing and able to help.
CASA programs train CASA workers extensively. You aren’t qualified now, but they can train and qualify you. There may be different levels of training and working – I’m not sure about that and I expect it may vary from state to state. I’ve talked to people who were extensively trained and who dealt with seriously messed-up cases.
I expect you will learn valuable things about difficult subjects (e.g. signs of child abuse). Just doing the training should also give you tools to use for the rest of your life in recognizing and dealing with the messed up people you’ll meet in the rest of your own life, too.
It may also be really hard and upsetting and mess with your peace of mind. The people I talked to all said it was valuable and needed work and they’re glad they did it but it was hard and they eventually stopped doing it because it was too much. It’s often heartbreaking how little can be done in our current system for kids who are in atrocious situations, and adults who need healing etc but our society isn’t set up to handle it well.