Grant will provide children non-violent visits with parents

EAST PRAIRIE -- The grant was awarded to the city of East Prairie for a Susanna Wesley Family Learning Center program but the true beneficiaries are the children.

The $349,330 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women is for the The Safe Havens: Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange Grant Program offered at the Center.

"The goal of the program is to provide children with safe and meaningful access to both of their parents with no further threat of any kind of violence, without so much of the conflict that so often surrounds exchanges of children," said Marsha Keene-Hutchason, the Center's director of victim services.

Specifically, the program provides "supervised visitation and exchange services in cases between parents and children who have been the victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or child abuse when it unsafe for the children or the parents involved," Keene-Hutchason said. "Typically these are court-ordered referrals."

Safe Havens can also provide the services by request "as long as one of the parents retains custody of the child," she said. "If the child has been placed in foster care -- we can't do those."

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