Connection Room launches at Wilson County Juvenile Court
Jul. 24—The Connection Room at Wilson County Juvenile Court — the first room of its kind in Tennessee — launched in Lebanon on Friday.
"The goals of the space are to create a multi-sensory experience for kids and families to regulate and connect," Empowered to Connect Founder and Program Director Tona Ottinger said.
Ottinger described the connection room as a place for families to meet, step away and support a child in a space adjacent to the courtroom as a part of instilling trauma-informed best practices within the court.
"These kinds of court spaces and this sort of support is widely accepted and is becoming sort of the best practice for court systems," Ottinger said. "It's kind of like how in schools they might have a sensory room or a place like that for kids to regulate."
Through a statewide initiative called Safe and Secure Tennessee, organizations come together to learn about trauma-informed best practices to create systemic change across a community.
"Court can be stressful, and it can be a difficult thing for children and families and those that are supporting them to experience," Ottinger said. "This is a safe place for them to step away, meet their own needs and then return to whatever proceedings are taking place."
The Wilson County Safe and Secure collective meets regularly to put those practices into place in their organizations and those they serve. Ottinger said that the organization that champions that work in Wilson County is Foster 180, which is connected to juvenile court.
"We have worked collaboratively to create a room at the court called the Connection Room that will offer families, children and those that are serving them a safe space to regulate and connect while they're involved in court proceedings, before, after or during," Ottinger said.
Jenny Sanders and her husband are the co-founders of Foster 180, which has been working to create the connection room at Wilson County Juvenile Court.
"I work for youth services here in Wilson County and there was a room next to the courtroom that sometimes the kids would have to go in," Sanders said. "I just talked to Judge (Barry) Tatum one day and said, 'Wouldn't it be great if we had a room where the kids could experience Trust-Based Relational Intervention and be connected with in a way that would help them be calm."
In addition to providing children with a safe space to regulate, the Connection Room will also provide a space for them to go during criminal cases that involve children.
"Sometimes when there's testifying going on, they cannot be in the courtroom, so they're kind of shuffled out so that room will be used for them as well," Sanders said. "The idea is just to have a safe place for kids to go who are experiencing really hard situations here at court."
