Danger or Safety? The privitization of Brevard County Family Court Services

USPA NEWS - So with an objective observation, can it be implied the receptionist must sit comfortably behind their glass window in a spacious office? Are the rooms being used for the children and visitation too small? Children confined...

In the current economy and due to budget cuts certain services within the realm of Brevard County's Family Court have been leased out to private organizations. These organizations are funded by other private organizations and corporations. Services such as supervised visitation and mediation are privatized out to organizations joined together as a collaborative group called Brevard Family Partnership.

Eckerd Youth Services provides visitation for families in the court system in Rockledge Florida. The visitation center contains offices and a receptionist area, including a lobby or waiting room, as some may call it. In their most spacious areas, upon entering the building, the lobby is welcoming and the receptionist is pleasant. They have three visitation rooms available for use of which are not much bigger than a walk in closet at best. In fact they are equivalent at best to the size of a Brevard County Jail Cell. One room is so small it is fitted with a couch, chair and a television. Having just enough room to sit down there would not even be enough room for the edition of a small coffee table.

The other two rooms are slightly larger but not even equaling the size of the receptionist office.

So with an objective observation, can it be implied the receptionist must sit comfortably behind their glass window in a spacious office? Are the rooms being used for the children and visitation too small? What is the impact on a child in need of services being young, impressionable and full of life and energy? What about the child who has A.D.H.D. and needs to disperse that energy with physical activity? Florida Administrative Code 64E-15.001 section 4 defines a habitable room as follows:

“Habitable Room“ ““ means a room or enclosed floor space of a permanent living quarter used or intended to be used at a recreational camp for living, sleeping, cooking or eating purposes, excluding bathrooms, water closet compartments, laundries, pantries, foyers, connecting corridors, closets or other storage space.

How can such a room be considered for recreation? The visitation centers are supposed to be designed for families to enjoy their time together in a positive environment?

These conditions are placed upon families everyday. Furthermore, in such a small space there is little more to do other than observe a movie. If Eckerd Youth Services is providing supervised services for observing the family unit, how can that task be accomplished by merely movie watching? What kind of impairment does that place upon those families being in a room that can only be considered as confinement for both the child and the parent?

Observing the Eckerd Motto from their website located at www.eckerd.org , where it states they are the first name in second chances, one can only ponder what kind of second chance is being provided?

This has been another objective review.