NORTH COUNTY -- It is a sports-themed room nestled in a building in San Diego, with books, a television set, a small sofa and a table with two chairs a meant to appeal to a child spending time with his dad or mom. But the room is not designed for families to be alone together.

There is also a chair for a supervised visitation monitor who sits nearby to observe such visits, ostensibly to make sure the child is safe. Monitors also sometimes write reports that could affect future custody and visitation decisions in sometimes bitter custody battles that play out in the Superior Court's family court.

The monitors, however, face virtually no oversight, and parents or attorneys with complaints about them have few options.

Some court officials and others say they lack the authority and ability to take any action when parents or attorneys complain about the monitors, and that more oversight and regulation is needed.

Karen Oehme, program director of the Clearinghouse on Supervised Visitation at Florida State University, said communities "continue to grapple" with what standards and skills supervised visitation monitors should have, and state lawmakers ultimately will have to make any changes.

"I think certification and monitoring of supervised visitation programs is definitely the future of supervised visitation," Oehme said. "The thing is, it takes money. It will be a state-by-state issue and will be done legislatively."

A local, outspoken critic of the family courts, however, said increased oversight and regulation will not help and that supervised visitation should be scrapped altogether except in cases of documented abuse.

"I think we ought to explode the myth of oversight," said Bonnie Russell, 55, of Del Mar, who started the Web site www.familylawcourts.com during her own custody battle and believes more government involvement is not the answer. "There's not enough budget for real oversight, but more importantly, there's not enough interest."

State adopts criteria

Superior Court judges generally order supervised visitation for noncustodial parents in divorces that involve allegations of substance abuse by parents, child abuse, domestic violence, parents "venting" to kids about their estranged spouses, or parents sending messages to each other through a child, said Superior Court Judge William Howatt, the supervising judge for the family court in San Diego County.

Supervised visitation monitors can be "nonprofessional" -- family members or friends on which both sides agree who are not paid -- or "professional," paid monitors. Paid monitors generally charge between $16.50 an hour to $70 an hour, some monitors said. The rate sometimes is based on parents' income.

California adopted criteria in 1998 that all supervised visitation monitors must satisfy, but no regulatory agency exists for the monitors, a state court official said.

Patricia Chavez-Fallon, the director of the Superior Court's Family Court Services in San Diego County, said people who want to be paid monitors submit documentation to the court showing they have attended a training class and meet the other state standards, which essentially require that monitors be 21 or older and free of any legal trouble in the previous 10 years. Chavez-Fallon then adds them to an alphabetical list of supervised visitation monitors that the court provides.

The state standards, however, do not specify how much training someone should receive, and state and local officials do not certify or authorize specific agencies to do the training, officials said.

The list of monitors from the Superior Court includes a disclaimer that the court "does not select, evaluate, endorse or supervise" those on the list and that they "have not been screened" regarding law enforcement, children's services bureau or personal history.

Howatt said that providing the list may give the appearance that the court sanctions or approves the monitors, but it does not. The court's role is just to determine whether the monitors meet the qualifications in the state standards, Howatt said.

"Do I like that system? No," Howatt said. "Do I have the funds and staff to maintain the system I'd like to have? No."

Nevertheless, what monitors write about their observations during supervised visits affects decisions judges make, but how much of an effect they have depends on the questions at issue in each case, Howatt said.

"The reports are important," Howatt said. "Do I get a lot of good, solid reports? No. Do I get letters, impressions? Yes. It is consistently inconsistent."

Some complain about monitors

The court has received complaints about monitors, mostly related to how flexible a monitor is regarding the supervised parent's wishes about where visits will occur or travel, Karen Dalton, a Superior Court spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

Chavez-Fallon said through Dalton that she has received a total of 11 complaints from 10 people involving six monitors since February 2003. The court does not track how often supervised visitation is ordered. The family court handles roughly 20,000 divorce cases a year, Howatt said.

Marion Froehlich, a North County family law attorney, said she wrote a letter to the Superior Court's Family Court Services department more than a year ago to complain about a monitor who went to court with one of the parents and attempted to attend a mediation with one of the parents. The monitor remains on the court's list, Froehlich said.

Supervised visitation monitors are supposed to be neutral.

A supervised visitation monitor whose company has trained most of the monitors in the county and has encountered some problems of her own said her company has received complaints about monitors in San Diego County, including allegations that a monitor slept as a child met with a parent 200 yards away and that a monitor hired someone who was not trained to help supervise visits.

Susan Griffin, 52, the volunteer executive director and co-founder of a company that provides supervised visitation monitoring and has trained roughly 80 percent of the 46 monitors in the county who have received training, said her business receives two or three calls a month from parents complaining about other monitors.

Officials at Griffin's company, Hannah's House at Real Solutions Center for Children, said that if someone completes the 40-hour training course the company offers at a cost of $600, Hannah's House is required to give them a certificate that they received training regardless of how much information they retain or what the trainer's impression of that person is.

Griffin said she tells complaining parents there is no mechanism to deal with their complaints but that she encourages them to write to Chavez-Fallon. However, Griffin said she is unaware of anyone being removed from the court's list of monitors as a result of complaints.

Dalton said in an e-mail that the court has no legal authority to act on complaints about the supervised visitation monitors and cannot remove monitors from the list.

The court once removed a monitor from the list, but found it did not have the authority to do so. As a result, the monitor was put back on the list, Dalton said.

Chavez-Fallon said unhappy parents can go to a different monitor if they have a complaint.

"They are the employer," Chavez-Fallon said of parents. "The supervised visitation monitor is their employee. They just fire them and go to somebody else."

Making that change is not that easy, however, with parents incurring court costs and attorneys fees to go back to court to get a new visitation order if the parents cannot agree on a new monitor, some familiar with the process said.

Hannah's House faces trouble

Providing an estimated 5,000 hours of supervised visits per year, Hannah's House at Real Solutions Center for Children, is believed to be the largest supervised visitation provider in the county, officials there said.

However, Hannah's House and Griffin have encountered some problems of their own in recent years as well.

For example, Griffin, who has a bachelor's degree in behavioral science from National University and a master's degree in psychology from California Coast University, ran afoul of the state Board of Psychology, which cited her and fined her $2,500 in 2004 for practicing psychology without a license in connection with work she did in two cases about five years ago.

Griffin does not hold a license to practice psychology, according to a search of the state board's Web site.

Griffin said one incident involved a children's group that Hannah's House runs. The board took issue with how Griffin handled a situation with two siblings, but Griffin said she believes she handled it "appropriately."

Griffin said the second incident involved a case in which the family court had ordered a psychological evaluation, but Griffin said she thought it was supposed to be a different evaluation called a parenting assessment. Griffin said she was not qualified to do a psychological evaluation and would not have done it if she'd known that is what the court ordered.

The Board of Psychology also reviewed two cases in which Griffin supervised visits and found no problems with them, Griffin said.

Judge Howatt and Chavez-Fallon of Family Court Services said they were unaware of the action the psychology board took against Griffin last year.

"If she has been reviewed and disciplined by an agency or group that supervises her, I'm assuming there was something wrong and that discipline has resolved the issue," Howatt said.

Howatt and Chavez-Fallon also said supervised visitation monitors are not required to have any training in mental health nor do they have to be psychologists.

Griffin's company also is paying back the county money from contracts it had four years ago to provide supervised visitation services. The company, known then as Real Solutions Center for Children, terminated the contracts in 2001. Griffin's business has paid the county $37,000 of the $74,000 it owes from those contracts and continues to make monthly payments, said Jack Pellegrino, the director of agency contract support for the county's health and human services agency.

Before the contracts ended, the county investigated complaints alleging in part that the premises where Griffin's company were located at the time were unsafe and unsanitary and that "fiscal irregularities" existed. The county's report on its investigation stated that there were "no major substantiated findings."

The county concluded, however, that the business's location at the time was unsafe because a play area for children was not fenced, was in a parking lot and was within 5 feet of exposed metal and rusty nails. Griffin's supervised visitation business has moved to a new location since then.

The county also concluded the former location was unsanitary because of animal droppings on the upholstered furniture in the office. Griffin said a bird cage was hung near the corner of a sofa and somehow one of the bird's droppings fell on the corner. The county came to inspect the facility on a Sunday and saw the dropping before employees had a chance to clean it up, Griffin said.

Griffin said her company asked to end the contracts with the county because "we bit off more than we could chew," and the contracts did not provide enough money in the budget for the personnel Griffin's business needed to handle all of the supervised visitation responsibilities required in the contracts. Griffin said her business was able to document all of its money, but it was unable to do it in the way the contracts required.

Today, Hannah's House, with an operating budget of $200,000 a year, obtains all of its funding from private foundations and private donors, said Travis Bushard, 23, the organization's development director.

Hannah's House, provides explanations for some of the criticism it has received in the "frequently asked questions" section on its web site, www.hannahs-house.org.

More oversight needed

Griffin said she believes supervised visitation is an "evolving process" and that the next step "has got to be regulation."

Russell, the Del Mar-based outspoken critic of the family court system, said, however, that supervised visitation should "cease" because it's an added burden on supervised parents, no oversight exists, and judges treat reports from monitors like they have "therapeutic value" when they do not.

Russell, who was ordered to have supervised visits with her daughter before eventually being ordered to have no contact with the girl, said it is "obscene" that parents have to pay to see their children, in addition to child support, and that paid monitors are not needed to make sure children are safe.

"You're either OK to see your kid or your not," Russell said.

Sometimes supervised visitation reveals that no problems exist and supervision is not necessary, but it is a needed tool as the courts consider what is happening in a case, said Bushard, the development director at Hannah's House.

"If affordable visitation goes away, if supervised visitation goes away, there will be no mechanism for the judge to ensure the safety and welfare of the child while things get sorted out," Bushard said.

Howatt said supervised visitation is one tool the court uses and is necessary.

"I want to make sure the child is in a safe environment," Howatt said. "The only way to do that is to have an independent intermediary there."

Contact staff writer Scott Marshall at (760) 631-6623 or smarshall@nctimes.com. To comment, go to nctimes.com.