Our Dream

Our Dream

The seeds from which the Children’s Door grew were sown in 1986 when I began teaching a class entitled “The Long Term Effects of Divorce on Children” at Indiana University through the Department of Applied Health Science. The class was designed to be a small enrollment seminar for Human Development and Family Studies majors, as well as for those students majoring in psychology, sociology or social work. The first semester the course was offered, between 150 and 200 undergraduate students enrolled. This was unheard of for a first time elective course. Approximately 90 percent of the enrolled students were women. Students from all departments and schools across the university were enrolled. Half of the enrolled students were from divorced families who wanted to better understand their parents and themselves. The other half was made up of students who wanted to learn more for professional reasons, were dating someone (or married to someone) from a divorced family, or had friends who were from divorced families. Surprisingly, there were many women students enrolled in the class because they were dating men from divorced families and they wanted to “learn how to help him so they could have a better relationship.”

The class continues to enroll between 150 and 200 students each semester it is offered. The makeup of the students remains the same, except that the number of men who enroll in the class continues to increase. The reasons students give for enrolling in the class remain the same with one major exception: some women now anticipate that they may marry a man who is divorced and who has children and they want to know how to make their marriages work.

Clearly there was a need for this class in 1986, and there continues to be a need for this class even 20 years later.

In the early years of teaching the class it was difficult to find even an introductory level psychology textbook that spoke of the importance of both parents in a child’s life, much less the importance of cooperative co-parenting during and after a divorce. The United States was convinced that “custodial” (legal parent) and “non-custodial” (visiting parent) parental roles were best for children. I even remember a situation in the late 80’s when I was seated at a table in a restaurant which was next to a table at which several of the local judges were seated for lunch. Over the course of the lunch the judges began to speak of their divorce cases (in a general manner, they were very professional about the sensitive nature of the topic), and discussed their belief that the only reason fathers were fighting for custody or additional visitation time with their children was so they could reduce their child support payments.

It became clear to me that working to change the laws and social attitudes was the key to improving children’s lives. For the next decade and a half I worked with the state legislative and judicial bodies trying to introduce the growing body of research demonstrating that fathers, as well as mothers, are important to the lives of their children. This was no easy task, as legislators are hamstrung by the constituents who elect them and judicial bodies are loath to write laws.

Over the 20 years since I began to teach “the divorce class,” social attitudes have changed dramatically. While there is still much to be done at the legislative level, many of the laws have also changed to reflect a new social awareness that folloinw family breakup, it is in the best interests of children to have as much contact with both parents as is possible and appropriate (we must never forget that there are rare cases in which the child is better off by having no contact with a particular parent). My own state, Indiana, now has “Parenting Time Guidelines” rather than “Visitation,” although the terms are still used interchangeably.

Recently, the issue of never-married, paternal, same-sex, and even sperm-donor parenting relationships have received national attention. Like traditional relationships, too many of these relationships which include children end in acrimonious confrontations. How are we to meet the needs of these children?

While there remains much that needs to be done at both the legislative and judicial levels, the “next level” work is focusing on helping children and their parents (regardless of how family and/or parent is defined) understand the important role that both parents play in the lives of their children. Divorce, as we say, should end marriages but not parenting. Thus, the next level in social change will be to develop and offer programs and services that facilitate cooperative co-parenting.

That is where the Children’s Door program comes in.

In early 2005, a graduate student, Karen Ellis, who worked for years as the Program Coordinator for the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) while it was located at Yale University, enrolled in my class. She heard the twin messages about the importance of both parents in children’s lives and the importance of helping parents to learn how to cooperate with each other, even during the most difficult times, and asked me, “Why don’t we do something about it?”

So, we are. We are approaching the program and service development incrementally, because it is most important to do this right.

Our first, and perhaps most important decision, was to develop a program that would first and foremost meet the needs of the poor, working poor and other disenfranchised families. We developed a partnership between Indiana University, the local South Central Community Action Program (SCCAP) – Head Start, and the Children’s Rights Council in order to provide a free service in Monroe County Indiana which allows divorced, separated, and never married parents the opportunity to exchange their children in a safe, neutral, supervised environment. We began offering this service in December 2005.

Dr. Mohammad Torabi, the chair of the Department of Applied Health Science was so supportive of this plan that he provided the funding for the CRC training and startup expenses.

Exchange services that charge a fee already exist. For $30 per exchange you can have access to your children. That $30 for the Friday exchange, $30 dollars for the Sunday return exchange, and $60 dollars for the two Wednesday exchanges (pick up and drop back off). That’s $120 per week or $480 per month to visit with your children. This does not include Holidays or special events, all of which would include additional exchange costs. Poorer families simply can not afford these fees.

Our next steps are to develop this program in the surrounding counties and ultimately throughout all of south central Indiana.

It is our dream to be able to offer these services for free by relying on a combination of volunteers to provide the people-power and donors to provide the funding for the expenses for the services and expansion of the programs.

Simultaneously, we hope to develop, either as free-standing services or services offered through partnerships with other agencies, supervised visitation opportunities for parents and their children. Supervised visitation is both time consuming and expensive. There are three levels of supervised visitation:

1) Monitored visitation. This can be ordered when a judge is not sure of a parent's parenting abilities. An example would be in a paternity case where a father did not know he was the father until some time after the child was born. The judge might order monitored visitation until the level of competence of parenting can be established. The same might be true for parents who had refused to take part in their children’s lives and are now trying to connect with their children.

2) Supervised visitation. Similar to monitored visitation, supervised visitation would require the physical presence of a trained staff member during all times of the contact between the parent and child. The court might order supervised visitation in a case where abuse was alleged but not proven.

3) Therapeutic visitation. Therapeutic visitation requires the physical presence and involvement of a trained therapist or another professional recognized by the court. The court might order therapeutic visitation in cases where abuse and neglect has been proven to the court’s satisfaction, but the court is not yet willing to give up the hope for family reconciliation.

Supervised visitation also includes the necessity for having trained security personnel on site at all times during which visitations are ordered. Trained security personnel are expensive. Digital recording equipment is expensive, and licensed therapists are expensive.

In additional to these services, we hope to develop and provide:

1) Parent education (Family Life Education) programs;

2) Post-divorce education programs for both parents and children;

3) Education programs that promote alternatives to litigation for issues which relate to parenting and children.

While the heart and soul of our dream is to provide services to improve the lives of children and families, our dream also includes the development and implementation of research and research methodologies to allow us to monitor our programs and services so that we can enhance those that prove to be effective and modify or eliminate those that are not.

Ultimately, it is our dream to develop the “Center for the Support and Promotion of Cooperative Co-parenting.” It would be under this umbrella that all of our programs, services, and research efforts would be housed, coordinated, and distributed.

It is obvious that our long range plans and dreams are far-reaching and expensive. Aiding the working poor, the poor and the disenfranchised always is. You can be a part in making the dream come true by supporting our efforts either by volunteering to work with us as service providers or by making tax deductible contributions to our program.

Sincerely,
Robert E. Billingham, Project Director

Email: childoor@indiana.edu
Last updated: April 6, 2007