Sonia Noorman: Human of CASA

West Michigan Partnership for Children (WMPC), a local nonprofit at the heart of Kent County’s foster care system, was founded in 2017 to transform how children and families experience care. Built on collaboration, WMPC works with community agencies to strengthen families, reduce the time children spend in foster care, and reunify them with their parents whenever safely possible. This work is not easy—but it is sustained by people whose commitment endures through the challenges.

One of those people is Sonia Noorman, WMPC’s CEO. Sonia has spent nearly her entire career in child welfare, drawn to foster care long before she entered the field. “I’ve always had foster care on the brain,” she recalls. In high school, she saw a younger student struggling at home and urged her own parents to foster the girl. That plan didn’t unfold as she hoped, but her parents did become foster parents—an early glimpse into the long, sometimes winding path of making change.

Originally planning to follow her father’s footsteps as a therapist, Sonia quickly found her passion bound up with child welfare. She joined Wellspring Lutheran Services, steadily advancing to statewide division director before helping to create WMPC and then leading it. Each step reflects a pattern: taking on hard roles and staying long enough to build something lasting.

Sonia’s leadership centers on collaboration because she has seen how children benefit when everyone involved works together. She values CASA volunteers for their consistency in a system where turnover is high. “The CASA is often the person that stays with the kids and the family,” she explains. “If there’s turnover, there’s still somebody there with the kids.”

Sonia knows firsthand how exhausting child welfare can be. Yet she has spent decades training and developing leaders so that more people stay, grow, and carry the work forward. “It is a difficult field. You learn a lot, you make a lot of difference, but boy, it’s exhausting,” she says. What sustains her is seeing others—longtime workers and fresh faces alike—hold fast to their commitment. “Those are the people who keep us going.”

Sonia’s journey, like WMPC itself, is a testament to steady dedication in the face of difficulty—transforming a system not through quick fixes but through persistence, collaboration, and hope.

This post is part of our 2025 Humans of CASA of Kent County campaign. Click here to check out the campaign webpage and read more featured stories.