 At Audiology Associates of Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing with 40 years of being in the hearing care industry. You'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 Northlake Drive in Prestonsburg. April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, and according to the Department of Health and Human Services, 17 in every 1,000 children in Kentucky are abused. Casa is working to change that. Our ultimate goal is, you know, we believe that children deserve the best. You know, they deserve to have someone who's fair and partial to kind of campaign for their best interests and for their future. And, you know, as I was stating, these children, you know, it's going through the court system is scary for adults. And you can't imagine what it's like for these children. And we want to make sure we employ or train individuals that are willing to help these kids. Casa is a nonprofit and relies on volunteers from the community to advocate for the best interest of children in the court system. Starting out with Casa, we didn't have any volunteers, so I took on three cases myself. So we attend court with these children so that they don't feel so alone. But we also do home visits where we get to know the kids. We get to, honestly, we get to know them on a much more personal level than the judge would be able to. And our court reports, the reason we do those is so that the judge can have a little bit of an insight of what's honestly going on with these children, because social services is so overworked. They have 50, 60 cases themselves where Casa volunteers will only have one or two. I think the main thing I'd want potential volunteers to know is that this is really rewarding work. The moment you understand that you have made a difference in these children's lives, it's a feeling like no other. Casa will be hosting training April 25th for those looking to volunteer. Our second training of the year is occurring starting on, I do believe April 25th. It's at five o'clock and it'll be at our Prestonsburg office. But that's where we do our pre-service training. That's where our volunteers will start getting information about what they do as advocates and start going through that whole process of looking at how to be a proper advocate to these children. For more information, go to Casa of Appalachian Mountains Prestonsburg office on Facebook. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robinson.