‘90s FAMILY : Parenting Centers Give Families Place to Heal : Social services: Troubled adults learn how to be better parents. But more importantly, children can spend time with Mom or Dad without fear of neglect or abuse.

There were days when the young mother, a manic-depressive, never left her bedroom. Her three children, ages 2 to 9, were left to fend for themselves. When she tried to commit suicide almost two years ago, her children were placed in foster care by the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services.

But the woman has been reunited with her children and says her worst days are behind her. She gives credit for keeping connected with them to the Family Visitation/Parent Learning Center in North Hollywood, a new type of social service center that has gained popularity nationally.

Located on a quiet street shaded by lush sycamore trees, the ranch-style home provides a safe environment where at-risk children can spend time with their families without fear of additional neglect or abuse.

Sponsored by the nonprofit Children’s Bureau of Southern California, it is one of eight visitation centers in Southern California and about 100 nationwide. It offers parent-education classes and support groups for abuse prevention. Other supervised visitation centers provide a neutral site for the children of parents caught in custody battles.

Through her experiences at the North Hollywood facility, the woman said she learned to “parent like an adult.”

The guidance she received from the staff “helped get my children home by helping me gain confidence as a parent,” she added. “I still bonded with my children, because I was able to care for them like at my own home.”

Such centers are becoming the “social service of the future,” said Joanne Karolzak, president of the nonprofit Visitation Network in Tucson. “There is a greater understanding--on the part of judges, family-law attorneys and psychologists--of children needing to maintain relations with their birth parents,” she said. The visitation centers “provide a safe place so the parent and child can maintain contact.”

When children are separated from their parents, no matter what the reason, they experience loss, Karolzak said. “In order for them to go through the grieving and healing process, they must maintain contact with both their parents. Otherwise, they can become emotionally stunted.”

Foster children, she continued, are at a greater risk, because they are separated from both parents. But children separated from a parent through divorce face the same sense of loss. “Children need ongoing relationships with their non-custodial parent. But sometimes it is not safe for children, so supervised visits become necessary.”

Visitation centers received a boost--at least temporarily--in September when Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law the $30-billion crime bill. Part of that bill was the Child Safety Act, which called for $15 million to fund up to 50 supervised visitation centers for “the protection of children from the trauma of witnessing or experiencing death during parental/child visitations or visitation exchanges.”

In spite of recent Republican victories in Congress, Karolzak does not think visitation centers will suffer. “Supervised visitation is law-and-order oriented. If they see supervised visitation as an enforcement agency, it should fare well” in the debate over spending, she said.

Bridge Focus, a nonprofit agency in Burbank, provides supervised visitation for 35 families per year involved in custody disputes.

Family-law attorneys and judges refer clients to the agency for monitoring in cases of allegations of physical or mental abuse.

In spite of the degree of abuse, said Richard Hill, director of Bridge Focus, “the child wants to maintain the relationship with his (estranged) parent, but they want the hurting to stop. They don’t want the bad stuff to continue. So we protect them for their own well-being.”

Bridge Focus offers fees on a sliding scale to its clients, which is an advantage to most parents who are deluged with legal fees during a divorce, Hill said. But because of a cut in county funds to $14,000 annually--down from $25,000--visitations are being reduced to three per week.

The North Hollywood visitation center, opened July 1, allows 12 children, from infants to 5 years old, to meet weekly with their birth parents. These children are referred by the Children’s Services because of their families’ involvement in substance abuse, mental illness or other forms of abuse or neglect.

Beginning in 1983, the Children’s Bureau placed at-risk children younger than 5 in residential group homes. But running a group home cost the taxpayer nearly $50,000 a year per child, said Alex Morales, executive director of the Children’s Bureau.

The agency now serves 12 children each year for the same money it used to spend serving one, Morales said.

At the visitation center, foster-care children meet with their birth parents up to three times a week from two to 10 hours per visit. The staff does more than monitor visits, said Penelope Katz, visitation center social worker. “They try to coach parents on how to play with their child, how to fix a child a nutritious meal or how to discipline the child.”

Many parents of abused or neglected children do not know how to parent, Katz added. “This program allows them the opportunity to learn practical skills in a safe place.

“When a child is removed from a home, the parent-child bond is broken. If parents have the opportunity to bond with their child, the tendency toward abuse decreases,” Katz said.

The soft-spoken woman with the three children agreed.

“The (parenting) classes give me a place to talk about what I need to do,” she said. “They help me to hear what other parents are going through with their children.”