Children's Safety Centers (CSC) was founded in 1993 by a visionary woman whose husband was convicted of beating their four-year-old son with a board. CSC’s founder was also a victim of domestic violence, and after being ordered by the courts to provide visitation between her children and their father, she knew that a safe place for visits was needed. CSC began in St. Paul serving 20 families. Today, CSC has grown to serve more than 800 families at 5 locations serving 25 counties.

The purpose of Children's Safety Centers is to provide children with an opportunity to develop a safe, happy and healthy relationship with their parents. Children's Safety Centers offers services to families where there have been a variety of histories that may include abuse (physical, emotional, or sexual), chemical dependency, or mental illness. There are other reasons that people may use CSC's services, including parents trying rebuild lost relationships with their children. CSC also provides services for grandparent or foster family visitation. Children's Safety Centers also serves children who are the victims of emotional abuse as a result of witnessing domestic violence in their homes, between their parents.

CSC is proud to be the premier supervised visitation organization in Minnesota. This is for a variety of reasons, primarily because CSC is the only single-source provider of supervised visitation and safe exchange in eastern Minnesota (from Rochester to Duluth). As visitation and safe exchange services are at the core of what the Children’s Safety Centers offers, we are in the unique position to perfect, enhance, and evaluate our programs to ensure the highest quality family visitation services. In 2008, CSC facilitated 1,368 visitations and 915 safe exchanges. Further, CSC offers:

*16-year track record of consistent, quality service in area of access and visitation without an incident that resulted in physical harm
*Impeccable history of hosting a large volume of safe visits and exchanges
*Excellent reputation among courts and other agencies that are involved with client’s lives, such as those ordering visitation, and those seeking child support payments
*Service standards that have been replicated internationally as best practices in managing safe visitation and exchanges

Children's Safety Centers provides three key services for children and families.

Supervised visitation: This service offers a safe place for a child(ren) to visit with their parent in a supervised setting. CSC currently provides 5 different visitation sites in the metro and surrounding areas. All of the supervised visits take place in a well-prepared, child-centered environment with various toys, games, arts and crafts projects, as well as playgrounds and gymnasiums, with activities for children of all ages. Children's Safety Centers strives to make the visitation sessions as natural and as welcoming as possible to all families.

Safe Exchange: Supervised exchange services offer similar safeguards, serving as a safe place where a child, making a visitation transition from one parent to the other, benefits from the safe exchange site. This eliminates the anger, tension, and even the possibility of danger that may be involved in an unsupervised exchange.

Supervised Phone Calls: It is often the case in a situation where the child(ren) is living with one parent and the non-custodial parent is granted regular phone visitation rights. Children's Safety Centers provides supervised phone calls to ensure that there are no negative influences on the child by either party. This service relieves the suspicion associated with unsupervised phone calls between parent and child.

To protect these children and support the development of healthier families, safe visitation services are critical. Not only does supervised visitation ensure a child is safe, research indicates that children who participate in supervised visitation have a higher self-esteem, are better problem solvers, have fewer behavior problems and are more socially competent than those who are not visited at all (McWey, Lenore. Family Relations, 2004).

A letter of appreciation from one of our clients demonstrates the reality of this research. Marie writes:
“In my opinion all of the money and effort donated to the center goes to save lives. My children have gone from suffering abuse at the hands and voice of their father, having low self esteem, trouble learning, and multiple physical symptoms – all from experiencing the abusive manner in which he treated their mother and having fear and sadness being the most used emotions in their lives. They no longer have symptoms of abuse. They are now doing well in school and a neighbor told me last summer, ‘I don’t think I have ever heard the girls giggle so much, they seem so happy.’ My children are safe while visiting their father – I do not know how life would be without the Children's Safety Center. Thank you.”