09101996 - News Article - Family House clinches funding for 1997

Family House clinches funding for 1997
NWI Times
Sep 10, 1996
http://www.nwitimes.com/uncategorized/family-house-clinches-funding-for/article_d4ceb503-0e7f-5d88-b7b2-c72923ece3f4.html
What's next
Porter County Council members have until Friday to balance an $18.2 million budget. They've already cut more than $3.8 million from county departments' 1997 budget requests; by mid-Monday evening, they had less than $195,000 in cuts left to find. Budget hearings continue at 4:30 p.m. today in the County Administration Building.

VALPARAISO - A child visitation center that two Porter County judges say isn't meeting the needs of children from divorced families will continue receiving county funds.

The County Council agreed Monday that the $33,400 it has traditionally allocated to Family House in Valparaiso should automatically get the money next year.

Porter Superior Court judges Thomas Webber and Roger Bradford had advocated putting the Family House money into a general court fund next year.

Then, the majority of judges would decide whether the money would go to Family House, which they say doesn't have enough weekend hours to accommodate divorced families.

"We'd like to have the right to go to Family House and say, 'Meet our needs, please,' " Webber said. "We do need a visitation service we can count on."

But Ruth Massmann, director for Family House, said judges had never told the center they were unhappy with its weekend schedule. The center is open by appointment-only on Saturdays and Sundays.

"We can't provide a service that no one has told us they need," Massmann said.

"It's working. And we feel if it's not broke, don't fix it."

County Council members agreed.

Funding for Family House has been part of the county's circuit court budget since 1992.

Council members feared that by putting the Family House money into a fund called "children's visitation services" in next year's general court budget, the money could be used to finance more than one center.

"Unless there's a better plan ... I personally say leave it as Family House in the circuit court budget," Council member Karen Martin said.

Council Vice-President Mike Bucko agreed the judges' concerns were important.

But, he said, "It seems to me that (Family House) has been working.

"If you have a problem, work together," he urged Judge Webber.

The council's decision came as a relief to Family House's board of directors, many of whom showed up to hear debate on the center's county funding. Children served by Family House are typically referred by the county's divorce or juvenile courts.

The majority of children who frequent the center are in foster care; Porter Circuit Court Judge Raymond Kickbush refers them there.

Kickbush prefers Family House because the center is set up like a home.

But Webber said the center's limited weekend hours make it difficult for divorced parents who cannot exchange their children for weekend visits without argument to rely on Family House as neutral territory.

"One real problem that started about a year-and-a-half ago was the issue of family exchange," Webber explained to the council. "We were using the police departments around the county (for exchanges). Kids were sitting in the lobby, waiting to be picked up."

But after a disturbance occurred inside a Portage jail while children were waiting to be exchanged, divorced parents no longer had that option, Webber said.

He suggested the money be allocated to a children's visitation service fund so that judges could negotiate with Family House for better weekend hours.

Massmann said the center would be willing to accommodate family exchanges, but divorced parents would need to make appointments for this service, just as they make appointments for visits during the week.

"We can't just have people coming in and out," she said.

Webber told the council that the majority of the county's six judges favored putting the money into the general court budget. Bradford argued in favor of the change last week; Porter Superior Court Judge Nancy Vaidik also supported the proposal Monday night.

But Porter Superior Court Judge Mary Harper told the council she believed there wasn't a majority consensus among the judges.

"I would say it's pretty well evenly divided," she said.

"We have a lot of things on our table right now. To say, 'Let's throw Family House on the table and have the six of us do that,' I think, is too much."