Creating Special Places for Kids in Courthouses

The halls outside Los Angeles Family Court were once flooded with children, lining the marble walls and floors like Third World refugees: restless, unhappy, hungry and wishing they were someplace else.

Now, kids have a comfortable, safe and entertaining alternative -- a supervised waiting room that opened earlier this month in the Los Angeles County Courthouse on Hill Street downtown.

It’s a free service for parents who need to bring along their children while resolving issues in Family Court, which heard 107,000 cases last year.

“You can’t ignore the fact that people need to bring their children with them, and we have to accommodate them,” said Family Law Supervising Judge Aviva K. Bobb.

Nationwide, only a small fraction of all courts that serve children have child-friendly facilities, said Howard Davidson, director for the Washington, D.C.-based American Bar Assn. Center on Children and the Law.

“Courts in general are not consumer-friendly places to wait,” Davidson said. “Oftentimes, victims of crimes are in the same place as the person accused of being the perpetrator. That’s not a very good place for kids,” he said.

Over the last four years, the second floor of the courthouse on Hill Street has evolved into a one-stop family law shop.

Litigants can file cases, visit the family law information center, get free legal assistance, attend a domestic violence clinic, or get counseling and assistance on child support, spousal support or health insurance issues in family law matters.

A $2 increase in civil and family law filing fees sustains the child-care facility.

Courts in the state’s 58 counties have been encouraged to provide such facilities in older courthouses, and each courthouse built after 1986 is required to provide them. Statewide, there are 40 such waiting rooms operating in 14 counties, according to the Judicial Council of California.

In its first two weeks of operation, 315 children came to the child waiting room in the downtown courthouse, said Janet DuVal, family law and probate administrator and coordinator of the project.

“It’s convenient, and it takes the stress out of the kids,” said Douglass Martell of Norwalk, who had to bring his 5-year-old son along for a custody evaluation.

The child waiting room accepts children from 2 1/2 , if potty-trained, to 13. The facility is not open to court employees or jurors.

Unlike waiting rooms in courts in Long Beach, Pomona and Compton, which use court employees and volunteers to watch the children, the downtown facility is monitored by child-care professionals hired by the court, DuVal said.

“I like that they’re making sure the kids are safe. It’s very secure here,” said Marilyn Pryor of Carson, who dropped off her son and daughter while she attended a child custody hearing.

Security is tight. Upon check-in, parents and children are given matching wristbands, which parents must show at the time of checkout.

Unless custody has changed during the course of the day, the same parent who drops the child off must also be the one to pick him or her up.

As important as convenience for parents, Bobb said, is comfort for the children. The waiting room eliminates the “pressure-cooker situation” many children face during bitter custody disputes, she said.

With board games, arts and crafts, video games, a computer, two snacks a day and shelves full of toys, “waiting” room seems like a misnomer.

Soon after they were dropped off, 10-year-old Cathy Matell and 9-year-old Christopher White -- an aspiring construction worker -- became fast friends while building a carwash-turned-zoo with wooden blocks.

“I like it because there are lots of games and it’s pretty creative here,” Cathy said.

More rooms are planned for the Van Nuys, Airport, Torrance and Lancaster courthouses.

Davidson said interest nationwide in building the rooms has grown over the past five years.

“What we should be striving for all through America is making courts that serve children and families truly child-friendly,” he said.

“This is one of the most important ways of going about doing that.”