Supervised Visitation Awareness Month
May is Supervised Visitation Awareness Month and throughout the country, many human service organizations will pause for a moment to highlight the important role supervised visitation programs play in our communities. Supervised visitation has evolved into a critical component of our community’s response structure for families who have experienced challenging and often traumatic events that have led to one parent needing supervised contact with their children. The reasons that families need supervised visits are as varied as the people themselves, but often includes domestic violence, sexual violence or behaviors related to substance use or mental health issues that puts the other parent and/or child at risk. Each supervised visitation provider across Vermont uses a strengths-based perspective to provide the opportunity for parents and children to maintain contact safely during short and long-term transitions. As we highlight this important work, it benefits us to consider circumstances that brought supervised visitation services to Addison County.
In the mid-1990s in Addison County, a father was released from prison after serving significant time for the attempted murder of his wife and he immediately pursued his right to visit with two children. The father’s criminal history was lengthy and lethal, and community agencies including the Counseling Services of Addison County, The Parent Child Center and WomenSafe came together to develop an intervention strategy. They determined that our community needed an option that would satisfy the father’s legal right to visitation while maintaining the safety of the children and the other parent involved. This collaborative effort not only assisted this family, but also identified a gap in services that left survivors and children at continued risk as long as no safe, supervised visitation service existed. Eventually this effort was supported by a federal grant from the Office on Violence Against Women and, in 1998, created what is now known as the Supervised Visitation Program at WomenSafe (SVP). The SVP provides parents and children a safe, child-friendly space at the Addison County Courthouse for parents to have contact with their children.
The SVP receives high-risk referrals from Family Court proceedings, the Middlebury District Office of the Department of Children and Families and the community at large. The primary goal of each visit is to provide emotionally and physically safe contact between each non-residential (non-custodial) parent and their child. Services are structured so that no contact occurs between the parents. Visits are coordinated and monitored by trained professionals who ensure that program guidelines and expectations are followed, while supporting the parent-child relationship. For more than twenty years and during the COVID-19 Pandemic, the SVP continues to serve Addison County families in providing safe parent-child contact. The SVP stands with its fellow visitation programs across Vermont and the country in celebrating Supervised Visitation Awareness Month. To learn more about supervised visitation in general, please go to: www.svnworldwide.org and to learn more about the SVP in Addison County, please call 802-388-6783 or go to our website: www.womensafe.net/svp.
Harris Gerner
Supervised Visitation Program Coordinator
He/him