TREASURE COAST — Around 75 families will not have supervised visitation through the Valued Visits program on the Treasure Coast because of the loss of a $230,000 grant.

CASTLE, a nonprofit United Way partner organization, is supported by the area Children’s Services Councils focused on improving the quality of family life and preventing child abuse and neglect.

The Valued Visits program by CASTLE, which is court-appointed, has been providing supervised visitation for non-residential parents and their children in Indian River, St. Lucie, Okeechobee and Martin Counties for 10 years.

“Before Valued Visits, the judges said that there was no safe place,” said Dr. Doug Borrie, the assistant director for CASTLE. “Supervised visitation is needed when the court says the parent has a right to see the child but poses a risk. They still have a legal right for visitation.

“We provided a safe and neutral environment. Visits were happening in McDonald’s parking lots and at Grandma’s house.”

Each county has its own facility.

On Oct. 1, the grant from the Office of Violence against Women as part of the Department of Justice was lost. The grant called “Safe Havens” gave CASTLE $230,000 a year, which was used on the locations in each county. The money provided sheriff’s deputies, mental health counselors and monitors. The program was in place for two years before receiving grant assistance.

In a letter from Susan Carbon, director of the Office of Violence Against Women, there was an external peer review of each proposal. The board had $14 million in federally allocated grant money and 73 proposals totaling almost $29 million in requests.

After the review of all 73 proposals, the grant for Valued Visits was not renewed.

“It wasn’t that (Safe Havens) said that it wasn’t successful,” said Jeannette Walsh, CASTLE’s public relations manager. “They wanted to give other programs a start. It was a shift in funding priorities from the federal government. Given the funding, this would be reinstituted again.”

There were nearly 1,500 visits a year. Each visit had a sheriff’s deputy on hand, who provided metal detection and sobriety tests.

Now the program has lost the deputies without the money to help pay them. According to Borrie, many sheriff’s deputies have offered to volunteer, but the money for a deputy there every day for every visit is crucial.

The sheriff’s deputies have stopped people from bringing in weapons, contaminated food, and stopped those under the influence of alcohol.

“The sheriff’s deputies have had a perfect security record for eight years.” said Borrie. “People see a sheriff and their car and everyone calms down a bit.”

With the loss of the grant, each case now will have to have a risk assessment test that measures which families have the most risk during a visitation. This will determine whether they are a good candidate for the Valued Visits program. Some cases will be rejected based on the risk assessment test. Those families will either not have visitation or the visitation will occur in less safe environments like parks, family members’ houses or restaurants.

According to Jenene McFadden, the program manager for Valued Visits, the loss also affects the children.

“It’s frustrating. We have been doing these visits for 10 years,” McFadden said. “Some of these children have come a long way. I don’t want to see them regress.”

For more information on CASTLE and Valued Visits go to http://www.castletc.org/ or call Chris Robertson at (772)465-6011 ext 236.