Visitation Station aims to prevent tragedy here

By Mark Wineka

mwineka@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — Could the family violence and murders that occurred over the weekend in Graham, Wash., happen here?

Yes, but the Adolescent and Family Enrichment Council has a six-year program in place — the Visitation Station — aimed at preventing this kind of tragedy. It’s one of the better-kept secrets in Rowan County.

A grant from the Governor’s Crime Commission funds the program, conducted every weekend at the St. John’s Lutheran Church Child Development Center on West Innes Street.

Visitation Station provides safe, supervised exchanges of children between custodial and non-custodial parents or, in other cases, 1- and 2-hour supervised visits for non-custodial parents.

The “station” is used in cases of divorce or separations when the relationship between parents remains volatile. It also is employed when domestic violence and child abuse have been factors.

Friday and Sunday evenings are used for the pickup and return of children who are allowed to visit (unsupervised) with their non-custodial parent on weekends. Many of these participants use Visitation Station every other weekend.

For the safety and comfort level of the families involved, the custodial parent arrives at a scheduled time, drops off the child or children and leaves. The non-custodial parent arrives 15 minutes later to pick up the children.

A coordinator is on site to supervise the exchange and make sure the parents do not come in contact with each other. A sheriff’s deputy also is providing security.

“It’s a safe place to make the exchange without bumping into each other,” says Jeannie Sherrill, executive director of the Adolescent and Family Enrichment Center.

This kind of staggered-time, supervised exchange often is court-ordered, or it can be requested by the parents, who agree during screenings to follow the Visitation Station policies.

When the children are returned Sunday evenings, similar steps are taken to make sure the parents are not together for the exchange.

Saturdays are devoted exclusively to supervised visits between children and non-custodial parents.

The custodial parent leaves before the visiting parent arrives. When the custodial parent returns, he or she waits in a different part of the building until the visit is over and the other parent has left.

Because the visit between parent and child must be supervised, a trained facilitator is in the room, sometimes offering help and direction in building relationships.

“We’re doing some things beyond just watching the visit,” Sherrill says, describing how the program aims at helping parent and child with bonding, which could have been hurt by a volatile relationship between the parents.

“Kids are kind of in the middle of a situation, and they love both parents,” Sherrill says. “Our whole mission is strengthening families.”

The program also might refer participants to parenting classes or encourage parent-child interaction therapy for the most strained relationships.

Facilitators are contract people who work other jobs full-time during the week. They fill out standardized reports on each visit, and those reports can be, for example, important information when judges are deciding on parental rights down the road.

Sheriff’s officers also are volunteers who agree to work certain weekends.

At the Child Development Center, Visitation Station uses two to three rooms for the supervised visits, depending on the scheduling. The rooms have cameras, as do the lobby, halls and parking lot.

“We do a lot of things to ensure the safety and security of the families,” Sherrill says. “... I can’t say enough about St. John’s Child Development Center. It is a nice facility.”

The staff has photographs to make sure the correct people are involved in the exchanges or visits. Officers pass a wand over the parents coming for supervised visits and monitor the visitors from the moment they reach the parking lot.

The visiting parents are not allowed to bring any gifts or other items into most of the meetings. Some exceptions are made for birthdays and holidays, but the gifts must be unwrapped and checked by an officer. If a game is requested, the program — not the children or parents — will do the purchasing on the family’s behalf and make it available at the visit.

Sherrill says Visitation Station typically operates from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Fridays, 9:45 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Saturdays and 1:45-6:30 p.m. Sundays.

The program has some 800 contacts a year with mothers, fathers and children and, on a typical weekend, serves 30 families, though it sometimes can be upwards of 50.

The children involved can range in age from infants to teenagers.

The church allows Visitation Station to use the Child Development Center for free, reflected in the annual grant process as an in-kind match. Sherrill also credits Sheriff Kevin Auten and Capt. John Sifford for their help in providing officers.

Judges, the Family Crisis Center and Department of Social Services also have been highly supportive of Visitation Station.

“There’s a large demand for it — not every county has it,” Sherrill says.

The United Way supports the Adolescent and Family Enrichment Council.

Fees to parents using Visitation Station are based on a sliding scale, depending on their resources. The cost can range from nothing to $40 an hour for the supervised visits.

“We could probably serve more,” Sherrill says, “but we have limited space and hours on the weekend. We have discussed a second site.”

Parents from other counties sometimes have used Visitation Station, but they have to pay the maximum of $40 an hour for the supervised visits.

When she learned of the tragic killings in Washington, Sherrill immediately thought of the children, then of the caseworker who helplessly watched as the father locked himself and his two sons in the home before apparently killing the boys, setting the house on fire and killing himself.

Sherrill and her staff asked themselves were they adequately prepared at Visitation Station and emerged thinking that through its tools such as staggered pickup schedules, camera monitoring and constant supervision, it is providing a safe harbor.

Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263.