Hope House

Hope House, a project of Youth Service Bureau of Illinois Valley and the Safe Havens team, provides supervised visitation and supervised exchange services for those cases where: (1) visitation is by and between parents and (2) there has been a history of domestic violence, sexual abuse, stalking, or child abuse.

Hope House does not provide therapeutic visitation, nor do staff provide opinions as to custodial or visitation arrangements.

Contact Information

Hope House services are available in Ottawa, Morris, and Princeton. For further information, contact the main office at 815-431-0080.

Safety

Our focus is to keep all parties safe. Therefore, we work to limit contact between the parties during visitation/exchange. To this end, arrivals and departures of residential and non-residential parents are scheduled with a 15 minute buffer time before and after visits.

In the case of exchanges, one parent enters the site 15 minutes prior to the scheduled exchange time and remains in a private room leaving 15 minutes after the exchange has taken place while the other parent (typically the parent at-risk) arrives and departs at the specific scheduled time of exchange.

Referrals & Applications for Service

Anyone can make a referral to Hope House: the court, attorney, counselor, law enforcement officer, etc.; self-referrals are also accepted. For a copy of the referral form, click here (requires Adobe Reader®).

When a referral is received, staff review the case for appropriateness. Unless the court order requires the client to call Hope House, staff will then contact each party to schedule an individual intake/orientation meeting. If the court order requires the client to call Hope House, staff will not contact the parties first. All parties are required to attend an intake/orientation meeting and complete necessary paperwork prior to scheduling visits or exchanges. This gives time to determine security needs, discuss program policies, and determine visitation/exchange times.

Scheduling Visits and Exchanges

At this time, Hope House generally provides families with supervised visitation services once a week, for one, one and a half, or two hours. Supervised exchanges typically occur as court ordered, subject to the availability of Hope House staff.

We try to work with both parties to schedule services at times that are convenient for all parties (staff, the child/ren and parents); however, parents may be required to adjust their schedule as scheduling of visits and exchanges is dependent upon the availability of time, space, and staff. At times, there may be a waiting list.

Funding

Hope House is supported by Grant No. 2006-CW-AX-0013, awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice, to the County of LaSalle, Illinois. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women.