Beltrami Co., North Homes Partner Together for Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange Services

The Beltrami County Judicial Center is now officially partnering with North Homes Children and Family Services to offer Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange services for their Domestic Violence Court.

Last Friday, officials signed a contract with all the criminal justice partners in attendance who have worked on this project over the past couple of years. Officials say it is a much needed free service for the community.

“The Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange center will provide parents and children a safe and comfortable place to visit,” said Minnesota Ninth Judicial District Judge Annie Claesson-Huseby. “Today, we are here to celebrate the moment, when the planning stage meets the day-to-day operation of a safe exchange center here in Beltrami County.”

“There isn’t a week that goes by, really, that we’re not sitting in court and hearing, ‘I’d like to see my children and I don’t know how,’ or, ‘what can I do with that,’ and we need to use a third party but the court doesn’t really know who that is or how to monitor that. And so there just has to be a better plan than that,” said Deb Baer, DV Courts and CCR Teams Coordinator for the Ninth Judicial District. “And so, with the Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange center, our hope was that we could facilitate those exchanges and that supervision in a healthy manner, something that is focused on the children and their well-being.”

“We’re all about providing services in the context of community and the context of family, and trying to keep kids as close to home as possible and as safe as possible within their homes and families,” said North Homes founder and CEO Jim Christmas.

Beltrami County officials say their ultimate goal is to create a safe exchange and supervised visitation space of hope and healing for children and families experiencing domestic violence.