Celebrating 18 Years of CASA Service
A deep reverence for the natural world, an abiding love of family and her community and a commitment to helping others have driven Parker McMillan throughout her life.
This month she ends 18 years’ service to CASA of St. Louis having helped multiple children in foster care who have experienced abuse and/or neglect. Like all CASA volunteers, Parker has navigated a system that involves gathering information, working with a family support team, and making informed recommendations about what is in each child’s best interest. For many children, she was the only consistent person in their lives.
“It has been a wonderful experience,” Parker said. “The children I worked with have had a big impact on my life, and I feel I have been able to make a real difference in their lives.” A lifelong St. Louisan and now a resident of Kirkwood, Parker is the mother of three and stepmother to the son of her husband. She has nine grandchildren—five girls and four boys---and everyone lives in St. Louis. While she spends a lot of time being an involved grandparent, Parker has long been active with the Missouri Botanical Garden Members’ Board, where she served as president. She is also a member of the Shaw Nature Reserve Board and was one of the founders of the Spirit of St. Louis Women’s Fund, which educates and inspires women to engage in informed, collective grantmaking to support deserving small nonprofits.
Her connection to CASA began informally—at a party. “I met Susan Block who served as a St. Louis County Circuit Court judge and spent her final seven years on the bench in juvenile court. She talked me into exploring volunteer opportunities at what was then called Voices for Children.”
After finishing nursing school, Parker worked as a pediatric nurse at Ranken Jordan Hospital. Later, after earning a degree in English literature, she joined Washington University’s business school career center. For 15 years as the center’s librarian, she helped business school graduates find jobs.“
After I inquired about volunteering at Voices for Children, the director there hired me to train volunteers,” Parker recalled. While she was an employee there, she also volunteered as an advocate.
CASA Case Advocacy Supervisor Mariah Smith said Parker brings a deep institutional knowledge of the organization to her volunteer work at CASA. She adds that through her long service, Parker has not only consistently shown great compassion for the children she serves but has also been deeply engaged in helping other volunteers.
Parker has also served on CASA’s Volunteer Advisory Committee. This committee serves as a resource to CASA staff and board by sharing information about the volunteer experience and supporting outreach and community awareness about CASA.
“Parker has been a strong leader for that committee and most recently served as its president,” said Mariah, who helps CASAs navigate a system that involves fully researching the child’s family background and discussing each case with court officials and Children’s Division case managers.
It is in that system that Parker persisted in trying to find permanent homes for children whose cases sometimes continued for years. “For 10 years, I advocated for five children through multiple case workers, numerous therapists, multiple homes and schools and three different judges,” she recalled. “The five began their foster care experience living together in a foster home. The five began their foster care experience living together in a foster home, but unfortunately that placement was not able to provide ongoing care. Now they are adults with children of their own, and while Parker's formal connection to them ended when their case concluded, she still connects with them on social media, by phone or through lunch dates. “My presence in their lives has made a difference,” she said. “I was there for them when no one else was.”
Her most recent case ended with the adoption of a child she had worked with from birth to age 5. He was adopted along with his sister.
How has she managed through such heart-wrenching situations? “When I first began nursing school and was doing shifts in pediatric wards, I recalled thinking I could not handle the emotional burden of seeing the children suffer,” she recalled. “But then I recalled that these children needed me and my presence made a difference. If your presence makes a difference in the lives of children, then you can persevere and do your best to help them.”