Agency Offers Safety Net For Building Positive Relationships
Last updated Saturday, December 27, 2008 9:00 PM CST in Our Town
By Sara Sullivan The Morning News
ROGERS — In the front yard of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, the thin branches of a bare tree cradle a gray-brown bird’s nest.
Inside the red brick building, other family units are finding support.
The Arkansas Visitation and Exchange Center Inc., which currently makes its home in the library and nursery of the church, provides supervised visitation and monitored exchanges for noncustodial parents of minor children.
The service allows parents who have been issued protective orders or are awaiting court decisions to maintain a relationship with their children.
And emerging research indicates that “children benefit from a relationship with both of their parents,” said Jennifer Rokeby-Mayeux, founder and executive director of the visitation and exchange center.
However, when the noncustodial parent has an alleged or substantiated history of domestic violence, mental illness, substance abuse, extended absence, or any combination thereof, it’s not in the best interest of the child to be alone with him or her, she said.
That’s where the supervised visits can help foster positive relationships.
“Parents tend to be on their best behavior when there’s a third party observing” them, said Benton County Circuit Judge John Scott, whose court refers many families to the center. “It just provides a good atmosphere and a safe atmosphere” where families can maintain contact during pending trials or get re-acquainted after long absences.
“This is just a safety net that can be used on a temporary basis,” he said. “It’s a great program.” “It provides a wonderful opportunity for me to make sure parents and children can maintain ... an appropriate and safe relationship.”
Currently, all of the center’s 22 active families are court-ordered to participate in supervised visitation or exchanges, though sometimes the arrangement is voluntarily agreed upon during mediations, Rokeby-Mayeux said.
The purpose is to ensure the safety of all parties involved and to prevent any contact between the estranged parents.
“The exchange point of minor children is frequently a point of conflict between parents,” Scott said.
A center like the Arkansas Visitation and Exchange Center removes the likelihood of a disagreement and the potential need to involve the authorities.
“These cases are so emotional and the parents just have so much stuff going on and they’re not getting along,” Rokeby-Mayeux explained. “And even if they’re civil to each other during the exchange, the children pick up on that tension and stress.”
Early on a Friday evening, Rokeby-Mayeux was preparing to supervise a visitation in the rented space at the church. The nonprofit center, which she and a newly hired very part-time employee staff, offers monitoring six nights a week, on Saturday mornings and on select holidays.
She set up in the library, toting the files needed for that evening in a hard plastic pink case (“It’s the traveling office”), booting up a laptop computer on which to take notes, and retrieving a box full of board games from a closet.
The exchanges and visitations are necessarily very structured “just to avoid crossing in the parking lot or one parent following the other,” Rokeby-Mayeux explained. The noncustodial parent arrives first through a designated entrance. About 15 minutes later, the custodial parent arrives at a different door, bringing the child or children. The child is then escorted from one parent to the other.
During visitations, the supervisor documents everything, like the punctuality of the parents, the greeting and the separation. “We just want to have kind of a comprehensive package so that if there are things that are called into question, we have that” as a reference, Rokeby-Mayeux said.
On that Friday, the visiting parent brought in a couple of sacks of Burger King food and arranged cups of soda on the brown table before sitting to face the door. When the children, an 11-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy entered, the youthful, well-dressed women stood up to hug them.
“Hi, gorgeous,” she said warmly. “Hi, big guy.”
About 40 percent of the parents supervised are women and 60 percent are men, which surprises most people, Rokeby-Mayeux said. “They think it’s all dads that come,” but there are grandparents, stepparents, and even aunts and uncles served by the center.
About five years ago, Rokeby-Mayeux, a licensed social worker, had been asked by an attorney to supervise visitations for a family. “But then the word got out,” she remembered. “It didn’t take me long to figure out there was a need for a formal organization.”
The Arkansas Visitation and Exchange Center Inc. saw its first family in October of 2007.
“It’s somewhat of an emerging field in the United States, especially in Arkansas,” Rokeby-Mayeux said.
The center is the only one in the region and, as far as Rokeby-Mayeux knows, the state offering third-party monitored visitations and exchanges.
“One of the reasons that I really appreciate the program is because it provides that neutral supervision,” Scott, the circuit judge, said. Before, families would enlist relatives or friends to supervise the interaction, which can strain that relationship. And it’s often very difficult for parents to agree on a supervisor.
“It puts someone who’s already not neutral in the middle,” Rokeby-Mayeux said.
The nonprofit also provides a non-commercial environment for the visit, when often before, visits had to occur in public places, with all the accompanying distractions and complications.
But with the center, “it was just you and them (the children) and nobody around to influence nothing,” said Donald Rogers, who recently completed about four months of supervised visits while his divorce finalized.
When his wife issued a protective order against him and his lawyer suggested supervised visitations as a way for him to see his children, Rogers admitted he was resentful at first. But after he experienced a visit, “it really turned out to be nice,” he said.
“You’re spending quality time with your kids that you’d probably never spend any other time with them,” he said. Rogers and his children would share meals and play games, and he even brought his dog along every couple of weeks. “It was well worth the time,” he said. “I looked forward to my visits. ... And my kids loved it.”
A visit usually last two hours, which seems to be the right amount of time to prevent the children from getting bored and the parents from being frustrated with the children for acting out because they’re bored, Rokeby-Mayeux said. “It’s not so much the length of time but the consistancy of the visits” that seems to make a positive difference for the child.
The families often eat meals, play games, talk, work on homework or do crafts. “We really leave it up to the parent to kind of plan that visit and what they’ll do,” Rokeby-Mayeux said. “We know that the visits are in an artificial environment, but we try to make them as normal as possible,” and the observers do their best to be invisible while still being able “to see and hear everything that’s going on.”
Visit participants must always exhibit appropriate behavior and are not allowed to discuss the court case or other parent.
“Kids should not have to hear what the adults are going through,” Rogers agreed.
The Arkansas center, which is a member of the 17-year-old Supervised Visitation Network, can conduct at most two visitations at a time because of staff limitations and space constraints at the current location.
But the organization hopes to change that.
“They need to have a little bit bigger facility,” Rogers said. “There’s probably a lot more people out there that needs it, and they can’t schedule it in.”
The center received and successfully matched a $3,000 challenge grant from the Schmieding Foundation that takes it closer to its goal of renting its own building. “There are just things that we want to move forward on that we can’t in a space that’s not ours,” Rokeby-Mayeux said. She envisions a big family room with comfy furniture, toys and games, a kitchen area, and space to eat or work on a craft. “It’s not going to be like home, but ... we certainly don’t want it to look like an institution.”
The Jones Trust has made “a very generous offer” to rent the center a building on the former St. Mary’s Hospital campus, but the move must first be approved by the visitation and exchange center’s board, Rokeby-Mayeux said. And some members are concerned that the center isn’t yet fiscally sound enough for a move.
The $6,000 from the matched challenge grant would more than cover rent expenses for a year, but the organization cannot operate without insurance ($2,700 annually) and payroll expenses.
All expenses considered, it costs the center $45 for each hour of supervision, Rokeby-Mayeux said. Parent fees, which are based on a sliding scale, span from $15 to 45 for visits and $10 to 25 for exchanges (and there are occasionally scholarships available) and ideally cover 25 percent of the center’s operating budget. The rest of the funding comes from grants, fundraising and donations.
But Rokeby-Mayeux is confident that the parent fees collected from the additional families served at a larger facility would cover the cost of the needed increase in staff. And she said she’s willing to go for growth even if it means she has to get paid even less than what the social worker is making now.
“I know that we will not get a better deal,” she said of the Jones Trust’s offer. And with the building’s proximity to the other nonprofit resources on the old hospital campus, “it’ll be an asset to families in our program.”
A decision whether to move will be made at the next board meeting, the second week in January.
Rokeby-Mayeux is hopeful about a couple of smaller grants that are pending. “There still could be some things that happen before the end of the year that could make that happen,” she said. “We’re very close. I can see it.”
Another goal for the expanded center is to start a parent education component, Rokeby-Mayeux said, in order to provide participants with tools for becoming better parents.
“Hopefully, parents will mature to the point in their relationship with children that they can be a part — a constructive part — of that child’s life,” Scott said. “This provides the tools and a means of education.”
The ultimate goal is getting the children and their parents back to normal visitation in a family environment, Rokeby-Mayeux said. “It’s really rewarding when we can close a case because we’ve met the requirements of the court and the parents have done what they need to do.”
And even though the families will still have problems, they will be better off than they would have been because they were able to “stay connected at some level, even if it was pretty minimal.”
And there are many more families who might benefit from supervised visits and exchanges, if only they were aware that the services are available.
“It’s a great thing to offer to people who are having problems,” Rogers said. “It’s for anybody that needs help.”
“I feel like we’ve come a long way and it’s been a lot of small steps,” Rokeby-Mayeux said. “I’m hoping that next year all our hard work pays off. We’ll see.”
WebWatch
Arkansas Visitation and Exchange Center Inc.
www.avecinc.org
At A Glance
Arkansas Visitation and Exchange Center Inc.
Parent Handbook
All files are confidential and will not be shared unless subpoenaed by a court.
All visits and exchanges are facilitated by staff, interns and trained volunteers.
Parents must refrain from negative comments about the other party.
Parents may not attempt to get information about the other party from the child(ren).
At no time during a visitation is the parent allowed to be alone with the child(ren).
Whispering is not tolerated.
Instances of attempted “parent alienation” or exclusion, such as one parent refusing the other access to the child(ren)’s school records or schedules of extracurricular activities, will be documented and may be reported to the appropriate authorities.
A court order is not required for families to utilize supervision and exchange services.
Source: The Arkansas Visitation and Exchange Center’s Parent Handbook
Suggested pull quotes
“It’s a great thing to offer to people who are having problems. It’s for anybody that needs help.” — Donald Rogers, previous client of the Arkansas Visitation and Exchange Center
OR
“Parents tend to be on their best behavior when there’s a third party observing (them).” — Benton County Circuit Judge John Scott
OR “Children benefit from a relationship with both of their parents.” — Jennifer Rokeby-Mayeux, founder and executive director of the Arkansas Visitation and Exchange Center.
Razorback Central
July 11th, 2009
July 10th, 2009
July 9th, 2009
Reader Comments (No comments posted.)
The following comments are provided by readers and are the sole responsibility of their authors. The Morning News does not review comments before their publication, nor do we guarantee their accuracy. By publishing a comment here you agree to abide by our comment policy. If you see a comment that violates our policy, please notify the web editor.
Not already registered?
