Rockland Visitation Service Expands Services To Empower Children

ROCKLAND COUNTY, NY — A quarter-century after its creation, Rockland's court-ordered visitation program took a giant step toward expanding how it helps children and parents in high-conflict or high-risk family situations.

And it's doing so when that need has skyrocketed.

The service offers noncustodial parents who are in the court system a way to see their kid, along with a trained, independent observer to provide an unbiased assessment of the way the adult and child interact. Weekly reports help the judge on the case make evaluations and decide on next steps.

"It’s every child’s birthright to be loved," Rockland Youth Empowerment Center CEO Gillian Ballard told Patch. Many parents who are under court order to stay away from their partner and their children's home are desperate to see their kids, and the vice versa, she said. "The courts are aware a child needs both parents. At the end of the day, it’s all for the child’s mental development."

The program has seen a 70 percent increase in clients since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

"After the lockdown, there was such an influx of court orders," Ballard said.

Pandemic-fueled drug abuse was a big factor.

So far in 2022, the RYE Center has served 87 families, with 225 children; 49 percent were domestic abuse cases.

In response, it has expanded to give parents and children more chances to see each other in more than just an office setting, give children more choices for interacting, give families more ways for safe exchanges when parents are at odds with each other, and give everyone more time — for up to three hours at a session. Since its expansion, the center can now schedule visitations four different ways, seven days a week:

• Office visits offered on Thursday nights, Saturdays mornings and Sunday mornings
• Offsite, usually between 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. on weekends, in parks, libraries, even at the mall or bowling alley or Chuck E. Cheese
• Virtually, 5:30-7:30 seven days a week, where the supervisor connects with the parent and the child on WhatsApp
• In homes, primarily on weekends, between 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

It's a far cry from its small beginnings.

"When we first opened in 2005 we operated the one service, that was on-site in Pomona in a county building," Ballard said.

Back then, Ballard was running the Rockland chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters, a job she had heard about through the New City Chamber of Commerce, which she had helped revitalize.

"The visitation program had run out of money. I said, can we put it under the banner of BBBS?" she said. "And here we are 17 years later."

There are many reasons why a parent is removed from the home, she said, including emotional or physical violence, sexual or substance abuse.

If the parent wants to reunite with their child, they have to file a petition in family court. Often, if the custodial parent agrees, supervised visitation is the first step. That's where RYE comes in.

"Nobody should lose track of the human side," Ballard said.

For example, the service worked with an out-of-towner, a mother who was the visiting parent traveling each time from Long Island. "When the judge vacated the order she said - 'I would not have seen my child without this service'," Ballard said.

Before the pandemic, they used to do in-office intake, so many people — from all walks of life by the way — had to sit in the office together.

"One man waiting said 'I hope you don't judge me'," she said. "I pitied him. There are issues in all families. It’s called life. They range from medium to severe. Why would anybody want to judge another human being, we all make mistakes. Our purpose in life is to learn from our mistakes."

In 2021, with the need growing and services expanding beyond the mission of Big Brothers Big Sisters, the Rockland Youth Empowerment Center incorporated as a nonprofit.

The hope is that the very constrained budget from the courts can be supplemented through private fundraising.

They'll celebrate with an inaugural event in November. The event will also honor retired Family Court Judge, William Warren, who was instrumental in establishing Rockland's visitation model in the 1990s. It will take place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Suffern Nov. 16 — that's a date change as the event had to be pushed back.

Proceeds will benefit RYE's mission to empower children and strengthen families.

"We all take it seriously, so we know when our heads are on the pillow that we’ve done the best we could," Ballard said.