Annual Report 2025
Children's Safe Harbor is located at 1340 S. Alpine Road in Rockford, Illinois and provides supervised visitation and safe child exchange services. Children's Safe Harbor focuses on the needs of children who may be experiencing difficulties due to divorce, separation or family violence. Families enrolled at Children's Safe Harbor can be ordered by the court, referred by an agency or self-request use of services. Families may utilize Children's Safe Harbor as long as necessary at no cost.
Children's Safe Harbor provides supervised visitation services between a non-custodial parent and their child due to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, stalking and child abuse. Parents are court-ordered for Supervised Visitation when it is deemed unsafe for child to be alone with that parent or for other reasons. Children's Safe Harbor's programming is grounded in the belief that domestic violence impacts the whole family; therefore services are rooted in safety of both adult victims and children. Victim safety is considered whether the parent is custodial or non-custodial. Fair and respectful treatment of all family members is provided while not ignoring the circumstances that bring families to the program.
Children's Safe Harbor provides safe visitation exchanges without parents coming into contact with one another. Parents enter and exit the visitation center through separate entrances, park in separate parking lots and arrive and depart at pre-scheduled staggered times. Children are escorted by
Children's Safe Harbor Staff between parents.
For more information about Children's Safe Harbor contact 815-316-7772
or access www.childrenssafeharbor.net.
In 2025, Children's Safe Harbor provided 611 supervised visitations and 670 safe exchanges.
Coming to court can be a stressful experience, but having a therapy dog with you can help ease some of that anxiety. The program launched late 2017, and since inception the Winnebago County Courthouse has had over 725 visits from the therapy dog teams. In 2025, there were 146 visits. Therapy dog teams visited courthouse facilities to support court patrons as well as visit staff located within the courthouse buildings. Above: Judge John Gibbons visits with Oscar, a therapy dog volunteer.
Above: Judge John Gibbons visits with Oscar, a therapy dog volunteer.