The photos show step after step of Seward County’s iconic courthouse stairway lined with shoes.
Each pair represents an incident or encounter that made someone in Seward County pick up the phone and call the Nebraska Child Abuse Hotline in 2024, the most recent totals available.
It took one entire flight to fit the 237 pairs for the calls made in Seward County to make a point about Child Abuse and Neglect Awareness Month in April.
A Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services report showed that 51%, 121, of those calls led to assessments and 21% of those assessments, 26, substantiated the concerns expressed.
Forty-two percent of the assessments, 51 cases, were deemed unfounded, while others had alternative responses, ongoing assessments, or other classifications.
Stephanie Bertagnoli had to borrow shoes from the Et Cetera Store in downtown Seward to illustrate the numbers, lining them up after the courthouse closed for the day.
The volunteer coordinator for the Southeast region of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) repeated similar photos with fewer pairs in the courthouses of Saline County with 188 pairs, Jefferson County 128, and Thayer County, 81, illustrating their call numbers.
CASA is hosting a free program, Navigating Child Protection, at noon Tuesday, April 14, at the Seward Civic Center to share information about when people should call the hotline and possible signs of child abuse or neglect. The program and light lunch are free, but registration is required and available on the Southeast Nebraska CASA Facebook page.
Throughout the year, CASA pairs volunteers with children in the foster care system.
“I think sometimes when we are not exposed or not working in the child welfare system, we think that is not happening,” Bertagnoli said in a recent interview. “It is happening in our communities whether we want to see it or not.”
Neglect and abuse impact children in local schools, as well as their friends and families.
“Statistics are just part of the picture,” Bertagnoli said. They should lead to asking more questions, finding out what services and help children and families need.
“How many families are not getting services and still struggling and may be right on that edge and maybe are just not in the court system yet?” she said.
The volunteers are regular people, she said, including teachers, nurses, stay-at-home moms, and insurance representatives with varying backgrounds. Most are unfamiliar with the child welfare system when they start.
“It is really, really powerful for the volunteers to kind of see how this is impacting their communities from a different perspective,” Bertagnoli said.
Volunteers make a difference to specific children and their families, engaging with the child until their case is closed.
CASA has 16 active volunteers in Seward County with 19 children living in foster care. Across the southeast Nebraska region, CASA had 56 children awaiting volunteers in 2025 and 49 children with appointed CASA volunteers.
CASA reports those volunteers drove approximately 7,020 miles in 2025 and worked 1,397 hours on behalf of their assigned children.
“I do not know that there is another opportunity like that. Here you get to see a really big impact,” she said.
Volunteers commit to visit a specific child at least once a month and to meet with the child’s attorney or guardian ad litem, to prepare for court reports or activity. (Parents have their own attorneys.)
They may also meet with a child’s teachers, therapist or other service providers to get a full picture of the child’s situation so they can advocate for them and provide a written report to the courts for periodic juvenile review hearings which all involved parties attend.
Sometimes the CASA volunteer can advocate for simple changes, like the time a child just wanted to see their family pet and a zoom meeting was set up to make that happen
Sometimes the issues are big. They may need to advocate for additional therapy or other assistance at school.
“We need people who really care about kids and will stay involved,” Bertagnoli said.
Bertagnoli was a foster parent before she got involved in CASA.
One of her foster children was assigned a CASA volunteer about six years ago and that individual was “one of the biggest impacts on our foster care journey,” Bertagnoli said.
The foster child graduated high school and moved on, but she has remained in touch with their former CASA volunteer. When the position as a volunteer coordinator opened up at CASA, she was interested.
For the past two-plus years she has coordinated and trained volunteers in the four-county area, helping them advocate for children in the foster care system.
Bertagnoli is now preparing to leave her CASA post in May to finish up her Master’s degree and hopes to pursue work with young people and CASA as a therapist.
