Background Statement
Our services exist as they do today because of Annie and her children, Levi and Emma, or rather, because of the circumstances that took their lives. Though we began as The St. Vrain Valley Parenting Center, founded as an umbrella of Parenting Place in Boulder in 1998, to offer parent support and education to promote the healthy development of children, we became much more after obtaining our 501(c)(3) in October of 1999. On January 26, 2000, Annie, along with five-year-old Levi and fifteen-month-old Emma were killed by her ex-husband when she dropped the children off for a visit with their father. This tragedy prompted community representatives from our agency, the 20th Judicial District Court, Safe Shelter of St. Vrain Valley, Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center, the Longmont Police Department, the YMCA, and private psychologists and attorneys to come together as a task force to address the critical issue of how escalating violence between separated and divorced parents was affecting the children in those families.
Since 2001, our Parent Education and SAFE Services Programs have emphasized both the prevention and intervention of the trauma and harm children experience due to domestic violence, substance abuse, mental illness, and conflict in divorce. We are the only non-profit agency in Boulder County offering SAFE Services. Though we were not there for Annie, Levi, and Emma, we have been here providing prevention and intervention for hundreds of mothers and fathers taking our education classes and for the families who have participated in thousands of supervised exchanges and supervised parenting time visits.
Our SAFE Services Program addresses two major issues. Monitored exchanges we deal with the issues associated with conflict between parents. Exchanges consist of parents dropping off and picking up children with a 15 minute interval between the exchanges so there is no meeting between the two adults. The opportunity provided by exchanges is to eliminate triggers between the two parents that could have unhappy, unsafe, and harmful impact on the child. Supervised parenting time addresses the issue of families in crisis where parenting is an issue. In providing this service, our staff objectively observes and records the interactions between non-custodial parents and their children for periods of one to two hours during visits at our location in Longmont. The opportunity we provide with this service is the elimination of re-victimization of the child by the parent.
Through our Parent Support groups we support and educate parents in order to intervene in unhealthy parent behaviors and encourage parenting skills that will promote healthy child -parent relationships within an artificial parenting environment. Parents Involved in Education, through a collaboration of nonprofits, seeks to support the Latino community by providing education and support sessions to parents with an emphasis on parents becoming involved in their children's education.
The U.S. Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) has recognized the importance of Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange Programs. OVW states that these programs, among other things, protect children from the trauma of witnessing domestic violence or experiencing abduction, injury, or death during parent and child visitation and exchanges and protect parents or caretakers who are victims of violence.