The supervised visitation center in the Upper Valley – one of three in the state – has ended its New Hampshire services due to a lack of funding. Now, the state’s two remaining centers are exploring how to go virtual after COVID-19 temporarily suspended their in-person offerings in March.

Waypoint in Lebanon provided children in the Twin States a safe space to visit with their non-custodial or non-residential parent and served approximately 21 families at any given time. However, the center recently scaled back its services to only its Vermont families affected by domestic violence, mental illness or a contentious divorce – and those are now being offered virtually.

“Our New Hampshire families are really devastated by this,” said Jeanette Birge, director of Waypoint’s center. “I fear that with more families under stress than ever, the void of this services in the Upper Valley will leave many children in peril.”

This past September, Gov. Chris Sununu signed a budget that provided for a total of $900,000 over the biennium to be equally distributed among the state’s three centers: Waypoint, Merrimack County Supervised Visitation Center in Boscawen and Strafford County Supervised Visitation and Exchange Center in Dover. But months later those funds have not materialized.

The governor’s office said the state’s Department of Health and Human Services was in the process of reviewing applications from the centers when the coronavirus pandemic hit. Like many state funding requests, those applications are now on hold.

Brianna Beaulac, manager of Merrimack County’s center, said visitation service providers have awaited word since last fall about whether the funding would be made available and when. She said she had not been told that the money was not being disbursed at this time.

The center in Merrimack County is uniquely positioned in that county taxpayers support the majority of its yearly operational costs. Its services have ranged from fully-supervised to semi-supervised visits, in addition to monitored exchanges to allow for the safe transfer of children from one parent to another. The center, located on Daniel Webster Highway, can serve 30 to 40 families at a time depending on the type of service required.

“Although we’ve always had the support of the county, this funding was important to us and, more importantly, to the overall goal of supporting the availability of visitation services throughout the state,” Beaulac said.

Merrimack County suspended its in-person visitation services to families on March 18 and transitioned to providing child care for the county’s essential employees. In the meantime, staff are continuing to work on a concept for how to start remote or virtual visitation services during the pandemic.

“You have to consider the platform being used and be sure that it doesn’t expose the custodial parent or victim to having their location or contact information disclosed, even by things such as items or places in the background of any virtual sessions,” she said.

Concerns about everyone’s physical safety and the emotional safety of victims are paramount, Beaulac said.

“Are they able to hear their abuser or see them?” she asked. “What are the emotional consequences of having the non-custodial parent even virtually enter their home?”

Staff at Strafford County’s center have wrestled with similar challenges in recent weeks. Only after extensive consideration and conversations with families did the center choose to hold virtual visits, but with both parents on site, said Scott Hampton, a doctor of psychology and director for Ending the Violence in Dover. 

“It’ll work almost like the in-person visits with staggered arrival and departure times, a sheriff on site for security, but the child will not go from the residential side to the visitation side,” Hampton said. “We’ll have one family in at a time and two different staff monitors to support both sides. It’s very labor intensive and the most expensive option but it seems essential for maintaining safety for families who’ve experienced domestic violence, while also being mindful of viral transmission.”

Hampton said no solution is perfect but that the center felt it was important to continue an essential service, in part, so parenting plans aren’t disrupted or ultimately revised in court.

“Before we decided not to do anything at all, it was important for us to exhaust the possibilities, not just because we’re afraid of what the consequences might be, but because it’s in everyone’s best interests to support parent-child contact as long as it is safe,” he said.

To determine if the virtual service is a good fit, each parents must go through a new orientation process. For those families who don’t qualify or decide not to move forward, the center’s staff will continue to provide support services and outreach by phone, Hampton said.

“Domestic violence thrives in secrecy. There were a lot of barriers we broke through to help victims of domestic violence but many of those barriers have been reassembled because of this pandemic,” Hampton said. “Maintaining contact with survivors, as well as doing outreach with the abusive parents to manage stress levels and perform risk assessments, is absolutely essential.”

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