Beltrami County partners with North Homes to develop supervised visitation, safe exchange center

Sep. 29—BEMIDJI — Court officials and project partners recently gathered at the Beltrami County Courthouse to signify a partnership between the county and North Homes Children and Family Services to enter the next stage in developing a supervised visitation and safe exchange center.

After receiving a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women, officials within the domestic violence court system have been hard at work for the past couple of years searching for a local partner organization to help develop a center where families can easily navigate supervised visitations and custody exchanges.

Through the new center, visitation services will provide a controlled environment that allows a child to spend time with their non-custodial parent while the interaction is monitored by trained employees, ensuring the safety of the child.

District Court Judge Annie Claesson-Huseby noted that the center is a much-needed resource for families in the community.

"The need for a supervised visitation center and safe exchange center has long been recognized with regards to families whose children have been removed from the home due to abuse or neglect allegations," she noted. "But over time (it has) also emerged as an important service for families with a history of domestic violence or families who are engaged in a contested custody dispute."

The county has partnered with North Homes Children and Family Services, a regional organization that will manage the day-to-day operations of the supervised visitation and safe exchange center out of its Bemidji location.

North Homes has offices in Bemidji, Duluth and Grand Rapids. The organization currently offers outpatient mental health programs, residential treatment for children with emotional and behavioral challenges, school-based mental health programs and more.

For CEO Jim Christmas, being able to offer a space for supervised visitations and safe exchanges aligns closely with the values of North Homes.

"Keeping kids safe, treating them in the context of community and family is really paramount to our service continuum," he said. "It's a good fit, it's a service we're excited to offer. ... We're all about providing services in the context of community and the context of family and trying to keep kids as close to home as possible and as safe as possible within their homes and families."

Domestic Violence Court Coordinator Deb Baer has been heavily involved in the project, expressing that the partnership will offer peace of mind for families who have been tasked with locating third-party organizations or other people to monitor their visitations and exchanges.

"We came up with the solution that something like this would be a benefit to our community where it was just really lacking that service," she said. "There isn't a week that goes by, really, that we're not sitting in court hearing 'I'd like to see my children and I don't know how' ... and 'We need to use a third party, but the court doesn't really know who that is or how to monitor that.'"

When the center is ready to start offering these new services, Baer said that North Homes will be equipped to facilitate visitations and exchanges in a "healthy manner" that heavily focuses on the well-being of the children and victims.

"Domestic violence cases are some of the most complex and dangerous cases that the court hears and when you have children that are involved in that case, it adds to the trauma and the complexity," she said. "For that reason, we need to think about the children in these cases... We need to make sure that the children are part of that plan."

With the partnership between the county and North Homes officially set, the next phase is the development of the center, which will include creating policies and procedures and hiring staff for the center.

In her comments to the group of project partners and court officials who have worked to get the project up and running, Claesson-Huseby brought attention to the traditional greeting of the Masai tribe in Africa. Instead of asking "How are you?" or "How is your day?" members of the tribe ask each other, "And how are the children?"

"They do that because the tribe believes that the monitoring and the well-being of their children is the best way to determine the future health and the prosperity of their society as a whole," she explained. "Here in Beltrami County, the establishment of a supervised visitation and safe exchange center helps us to create a future when we're asked 'How are the children doing?' we can respond by saying, 'The children are safe, the children are well.'"