Beginning in 2002, Praxis worked in partnership with the Office on Violence Against Women to provide technical assistance to the Safe Havens: Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange Demonstration Initiative, and to provide training and technical assistance to grantees in the Supervised Visitation Program. While this project ended as of April 1, 2010, we continue to support visitation programs and their community partners via the resources developed during that partnership and found on these pages.
Other Praxis training and technical assistance projects are available to assist communities in the ongoing work of eliminating violence in the lives of women and their children. These include the new Advocacy Learning Center and the Blueprint for Safety, along with our longstanding support to grantees through our Rural Technical Assistance Project on Violence Against Women and to communities through our Safety and Accountability Audit program.
- Recordings
- Publications
- Links
Audio Recordings
Between April 2004 and February 2010, Praxis presented many audio conference trainings that addressed aspects of visitation program design and services. Recordings of these events are included here. Materials referred to in the presentation accompany some of the recordings.
Past video training recordings are also available for on-line streaming or downloading.
Click on links below for on-line streaming. To download recordings or binders, right click any of the hyperlinks below, then select “save link as” to save to your own local hard drive.
Strengthening Staff Skills: Engaging with Men, Women and Children in Supervised Visitation Centers, February/March 2010
Part 1: De-Escalation and Conflict Management
Tracee Parker and Beth McNamara
Listen to recording
Download binder
Part 2: Listening and Engaging in Dialogue
Melissa Scaia
Listen to recording
Download binder
Part 3: Decision Making in Supervised Visitation Center
Valli Kalei Kanuha, Jennifer Rose and Beth McNamara
Listen to recording
Download binder
Documentation, Record-Keeping and Confidentiality in Supervised Visitation Centers
Jane Sadusky, November 2009
Listen to recording
Download binder
Follow-up resource
Enhancing Our Work with Men Who Use Violence
July 2009
Part 1: Engaging without Collusion
Laura Connelly, Jennifer Rose, and Beth McNamara
Listen to recording
Download binder
Part 2: Dealing with Problematic Behavior
Scott Hampton and Beth McNamara
Listen to recording
Download binder
Part 3: Culture and Our Work with Men
Juan Carlos Arean and Jennifer Rose
Listen to recording
Download binder
Resources referenced during series
Crafting Visitation Center Policies that Account for Battering
Ellen Pence, Maureen Sheeran, and Jane Sadusky, March 2009
Part 1: Successful Policy Development
Listen to recording
Download binder
Part 2: The Architecture of a Good Policy
Listen to recording
Download binder
Part 3: Fatal Flaws and Remedies in Writing Policies
Listen to recording
Download binder
Issues in Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange: Building a Foundation for Safety
Ellen Pence and Beth McNamara, August 2008
Listen to recording
Working to Enhance Legal Service Resources
Sarah Buel, January 2008
Listen to recording
Download binder
Documentation Dilemmas
Jane Sadusky, April 2007
Neutrality and Impartiality
Ellen Pence and Laura Connelly, April 2007
Safety During Post-Separation
Loretta Frederick, February 2007
The Intersection of Battering and Child Sexual Abuse
Karen Oehme and Scott Hampton, December 2006
The Co-Occurrence of Domestic Violence and Child Sexual Abuse: Implications for Supervised Visitation and Exchange Programs
Karen Oehme, December 2006
Intimate Partner Sexual Violence
Part 1: Addressing the Needs of Victims
Sarah Heuser, October 2006
Part 2: Exploring Court Responses
Judith Berman, October 2006
Using Interpreters: Grantee Experiences
Tracee Parker and Chandra Yoder, March 2006
Being Concrete: Practical Tools for Building Community Collaborations
Ellen Pence
Video Recordings
Click on links below for on-line streaming. To download recordings, right click the hyperlinks below, then select “save link as” to save to your own local hard drive.
Victims at the Center: Developing a Safety-Centered Approach to Working with Victims of Battering
Ellen Pence, Sheila Hankins, and Jennifer Rose, December 2007
Behind Closed Doors series, July 2007
Part 1: Collaboration and Services that Make Violence Visible
Ellen Pence and Scott Hampton
Part 2: Collaboration and Services that Address the Specific Experiences of Children
Jay Silverman and Barbara Hart
Guiding Philosophies in Supervised Visitation: How Are We Keeping Adult and Child Victims Safe?
Ellen Pence, June 2006
Part 1: Men, Fathering, Domestic Violence and Culture
Juan Carlson Arean, August 2004
Video recording
Part 2: Differences Between Court Systems and the Implications for Visitation Centers
Loretta Frederick
Part 3: Advocating for Women in Custody and Visitation
Loretta Frederick
Renewing Hope, Restoring Dignity series, July 2004
Part 1: Lundy Bancroft
Video recording
Part 2: Betsy McAlister-Groves and Oliver Williams
Video recording
The following materials address supervised visitation and safe exchange in the context of domestic violence. They were developed between 2002 and early 2010 as part of Praxis’s partnership with the Office on Violence Against Women and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, to provide training and technical assistance to Supervised Visitation Program grantees.
On Safety’s Side – Protecting Those Vulnerable to Violence: Challenges to Notions of Neutrality in Supervised Visitation Centers
Martha McMahon and Ellen Pence
Visitation centers have argued that “putting kids first” requires neutrality in the “conflict” between the parents. But this position frequently puts adult victims of violence in unnecessary competition with their children for protection. The outcome can be harmful and contrary to the visitation centers’ intentions in adopting a stance of neutrality. This paper examines the practice of neutrality in relation to the protection of children and adult victims of ongoing abuse.
Engage to Protect: Foundations for Supervised Visitation and Exchange – Discussion Papers
Engage to Protect is a five-part training series developed for technical assistance providers in the OVW Supervised Visitation Program. The accompanying background papers on each subject are available here.
Show More
Recognizing and Understanding Battering
Ellen Pence and Jane Sadusky
Engaging with Battered Women in Supervised Visitation
Maren Hansen-Kramer, Julie Tilley, Beth McNamara, and Jane Sadusky
Engaging with Men Who Batter in Supervised Visitation
Maren Hansen-Kramer, Julie Tilley, Beth McNamara, and Jane Sadusky
Informing the Practice of Supervised Visitation
Melanie Shepard, Jane Sadusky, and Beth McNamara
Crafting Policies that Account for Battering
Ellen Pence and Jane Sadusky
Safe Passage: Supervised Safe Exchange for Battered Women and Their Children
Jane Sadusky
Safe exchange has often been overshadowed by attention to supervised visitation, yet remains one of the most challenging aspects of a visitation program’s work. This paper sums up key issues in safe exchange and presents strategies to address them.
New Perspectives on Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange: Orientation
Jane Sadusky
A visitation program is one of the few community agencies to interact with each member of a family. It is likely to be the only agency that has ongoing weekly or other regular contact with everyone and as such it has much potential to protect children and adult victims of battering and to help parents who batter begin to repair the harm they have caused. The first call or appointment and the kind of welcome that each person receives influence everything that happens from that point forward. This paper provides an overview of a shift in the practice from agency-centered intake to person-centered orientation as a framework for welcoming mothers, fathers, and children to the experience of supervised visitation.
Building Safety, Repairing Harm – Lessons and Discoveries from the Office on Violence Against Women’s Safe Havens: Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange Grant Program – Demonstration Initiative
Jane Sadusky
As part of the Safe Havens: Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange Grant Program, the Office on Violence Against Women developed and implemented a multi-year Demonstration Initiative to examine promising practices and take a sustained look at supervised visitation and safe exchange in the context of battering and other forms of domestic violence. It selected four demonstration sites to carry out this work: Santa Clara County, California; the City of Chicago, Illinois; the City of Kent, Washington; and the State of Michigan. This report presents the initiative’s collective and individual examination of visitation center practices, community partnerships, cultural accessibility, security, and sustainability.
Show More Building Safety, Repairing Harm Part 1
Building Safety, Repairing Harm Part 2
Building Safety, Repairing Harm Part 3
Building Safety, Repairing Harm Part 4
Demonstration Initiative Site Profiles and Safety and Accountability Audit Reports
As a participant in the Safe Havens: Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange Demonstration Initiative, each demonstration site was required to conduct community-based assessments, utilizing the methodologies of the Praxis Safety and Accountability Audit. Through their assessments, the demonstration sites explored four essential questions related to the design and delivery of visitation and exchange services.
Show MoreState of Michigan: What is the role of a supervised visitation center?
South Bay Area, CA: How can the work of a visitation center produce safety for everyone involved?
City of Chicago, IL: How does a visitation center account for peoples’ unique cultures and identities?
City of Kent, WA: How does a victim of battering who might benefit from supervised visitation services identify and access them?
Guiding Principles for the Safe Havens: Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange Grant Program, Office on Violence Against Women
Prepared by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges
The Guiding Principles were designed to guide the development and administration of Supervised Visitation Program centers in their efforts to centralize safety for adult and child victims of domestic violence. The Guiding Principles look beyond the visitation setting to address how communities funded under the Supervised Visitation Program should address domestic violence in the larger community.
For information on the Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange Grant Program and involved organizations, visit these sites:
- Office on Violence Against Women, Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange Grant Program: https://www.justice.gov/ovw/grant-programs
- Family Violence Prevention Fund for information on the Fathering After Violence Initiative and guidelines for conducting enhanced types of visitation: https://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/userfiles/file/Children_and_Families/fathering_after_violence.pdf
- Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community for information on cultural accessibility of supervised visitation programs: http://idvaac.org/
- National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges for information and resources related to domestic violence and child custody and visitation: www.ncjfcj.org
- VERA Institute of Justice for information on The Supervised Visitation Initiative: www.vera.org
For further information and resources related to violence against women, community interventions, and advocacy, visit these sites:
- Asian and Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence: www.apiahf.org
- Battered Women’s Justice Project: www.bwjp.org
- Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs: https://.duluth-model.org
- Mending the Sacred Hoop Technical Assistance Project: https://mshoop.org/
- National Coalition Against Domestic Violence: www.ncadv.org
- National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs – National Advocacy for Local LGBT Communities: https://avp.org/ncavp/
- National Latino Alliance for the Elimination of Domestic Violence: www.dvalianza.org
- National Resource Center on Violence Against Women: www.vawnet.org
- National Sexual Violence Resource Center: www.nsvrc.org
- Stalking Resource Center: www.ncvc.org/src