Safe Connections celebrated the opening of its new facility at 40 Beal Parkway SW with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday.

• The nonprofit organization, which provides supervised visitation and monitored exchanges for families involved in domestic violence and child neglect cases, has served thousands of families over its nearly 28-year history.

“We provide supervised visitation when there’s interventions by the state DCF,” said Audrey Frank, case manager at the DeFuniak Springs location. “We provide an environment where we have staggered arrivals, separate entrances and exits for both parties to keep everyone safe.”

These safety measures ensure parents don’t interact during visits. “The visiting parent comes in one door, the custodial parent comes in another door. The same for leaving. And then staggered arrival so that nobody’s sitting at a light right next to each other, following each other out,” Frank explained.

Safe Connections fills a critical need in the region. Families travel from as far as Panama City and beyond to use their services, with some even flying in from out of town.

The organization purchased the building two years ago with $400,000 in ARPA funds secured through Okaloosa County Commissioners. After the purchase, about $76,000 remained for renovations.

Shannon O’Conners, interim executive director, emphasized the community support that made the facility possible.

• “I want to put a lot of emphasis on the gentleman that helped us. His name is Rick Roush from Triple R Construction. He was my backbone to all of this,” O’Conners said.

Several local companies donated materials and labor, including Coastal Insulation, which installed all wall insulation, and Jordan and Jordan Construction, which replaced ceiling tiles with materials donated by REW Materials.

“Without community support, we wouldn’t exist,” Frank said. “There’s been so many times, especially this year, that we’ve been afraid we’ve got to shut the doors.”

Safe Connections operates three centers across the Panhandle, with locations in Fort Walton Beach, Crestview, and DeFuniak Springs. Each center typically has one staff member managing about 30 active cases, with the organization serving approximately 600 families yearly.

• “We have limited administration. Usually it’s just three of us,” O’Conners said, explaining that the organization runs with only five total administrative staff, including the executive director and accounting positions that handle marketing and other responsibilities.

The limited staff leads to waiting lists for families needing services. With centers open Tuesday through Saturday, each location can only accommodate one 90-minute visit during after-school and after-work hours.

“If you’ve got one person working there, that’s only one visit when everybody’s out of school and everybody’s off of work,” Frank noted.

Most visits are court-ordered in cases involving domestic violence, child neglect, dissolution of marriage, or reconnecting children with parents after absences due to various reasons, including substance abuse issues.

The nonprofit faces significant funding challenges. Originally supported by federal funding, Safe Connections now relies on a combination of nonprofit grants through the county, state-funded victims grants, and fees based on a sliding scale.

• “They’re not always guaranteed,” O’Conners said of the grants, adding that much of the administrative time is spent searching for and writing grant applications.

Candace Lynch, case manager at the Crestview location, explained their approach to fees: “We work on a sliding scale. It’s hard to ask people that don’t have money to pay.”

Lynch recalled accepting just one dollar from a client who was struggling financially. “It’s showing you’re trying the best that you can,” she said, noting that many clients are poverty-stricken, living in shelters, or homeless.

The new facility provides a comfortable environment for crucial family interactions. Leslie Velasquez, who has been a case manager at the Fort Walton Beach location for nine months, shared her experience.

• “I love my job. The kids actually make me so happy because they include me in their family time,” Velasquez said. 

Frank, who has been doing supervised visitation work for nearly 15 years, with six years at Safe Connections, expressed her personal connection to the mission.

“I don’t trust anybody else to care about the families the way that I do,” she said. “I grew up in a place that somebody should have come into. It’s so healing for me to be able to be that safe place for those kids.”

Sharon Rogers, who founded Safe Connections nearly 28 years ago at Shalimar United Methodist Church, attended the ribbon-cutting and reflected on the organization’s impact.

• “It was a vision of the community and it was a true grassroots project,” Rogers said, describing how judges, psychologists, attorneys, and social workers came together to create a safe place for children to visit their parents.

“The things that haven’t happened because Safe Connections is here are hard to quantify,” Rogers added. “I can tell you what has happened in communities that don’t have a supervised visitation center to provide a safety net for families, and that goes from harm, lifetimes of harm to children all the way to death of people.”

Community members interested in supporting Safe Connections can donate snacks, drinks, cleaning supplies, or funds to help the organization continue its mission.

“We’re a nonprofit and of course we need donations,” Lynch said, emphasizing the organization’s reliance on community support to keep its doors open.