Dr. Robert B. Straus

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  www.svnetwork.net/board.asp - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/5/2008    Last Visited: 10/5/2008  

  Robert B. Straus, DMH, JD
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  In 1991, Dr. Straus started Meeting Place: Supervised Child Access Service, a program of The Guidance Center, Inc. in Cambridge, MA, providing a safe setting in which children in high-risk situations can visit parents with whom they are not living.
  
  He is a founder of the Supervised Visitation Network.He was President of the Network in 1993-4, helped draft the Network's Standards and Guidelines for practice, and has served several terms on the Board of Directors.
  
  From 1995 through 2000 he was Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Coalition for Supervised Visitation, and in that capacity worked with the Governor's Commission on Responsible Fatherhood and the Supervised Visitation Task Force of the Probate and Family Court, helping draft the Guidelines for Court Practice for Supervised Visitation. (take out: he continues as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Coalition.)
  
  Dr. Straus has a private psychotherapy practice, working with couples and children, and remains the Program Consultant to Meeting Place.

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  www.svnetwork.net/history.asp - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/5/2008    Last Visited: 10/5/2008  

  Under the newly formed Board of Directors, Rob Straus is elected as the SVN's President.
  
  1994 Glynne Gervais hosts Supervised Visitation — A New Thread in the Social Service Fabric, from April 14-16 near the west campus of the University of Illinois in Chicago, Illinois.Participants were given tours of a few supervised visitation/child access agencies.
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  The SVN receives the first draft of Standards and Guidelines, co-authored by Rob Straus, Glynne Gervais, and Hedi Levenback.
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  1998 Recipient: Rob Straus honored by president, Nadine Blaschak-Brown.

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  www.svnetwork.net/standards.asp - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 1/31/2006    Last Visited: 10/5/2008  

  The S & G committee extends special thanks and appreciation to the SVN Standards Task Force members for their extraordinary wisdom, professional vision, and invaluable time spent with meetings, teleconference calls, reviewing, drafting, revising, and revising, and revising the standards: Barbara Flory, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., Program Manager, Heritage House, St. Louis, Missouri, Jane Grafton, Greater Vancouver Mediation/Supervision Services, BC, Canada, Judy Newman, Ministry of the Attorney General, Toronto, Ontario Canada, and Rob Straus, J.D., DMH, Director, Meeting Place: Supervised Child Access Services, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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  Jody Birch, Rainbow Bridge Safe Exchange/Visitation Center, Moorhead, MN, Barbara Flory (see above), Nancy Fallows (see above), Jane Grafton, (see above), Ona Foster, Faith and Liberty's Place, Dallas, TX, David Levy, Children's Rights Council, Hyattsville, MD, Teri Walker McLaughlin (President), Della Morton, Merrymount Children's Center, London, Ontario Canada, Joe Nullet, Family Nurturing Center of Florida, Inc., Jacksonville, FL, Vayla Roberts (Vice-President), Sharon Rogers, Judge Ben Gordon, Jr., Family Visitation Center, Shalimar, FL, Virginia Rueda, Family Visitation Center, El Paso, TX, Rob Straus, (see above), Georgia Thompson, LA Wings of Faith, Los Angeles, CA., and Beth Zetlin, Forest Hills, NY.

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  Benefits of Membership - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 12/10/2000    Last Visited: 1/22/2002  

  The development of the original draft was undertaken by the co-chairs of the SVN Standards and Guidelines Committee: Glynne Gervais and Heidi Levenback with the assistance of Rob Straus, past President of SVN.

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  Booming DV industry - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 8/2/1999    Last Visited: 9/19/2008  

  "All these visitations have been ordered because the children involved are at risk," explains Robert Straus, a lawyer and social worker, and currently director of the Meeting Place, in Cambridge.Straus has been a key figure in our state's development of professional supervised visitation.Asked to explain "at risk", he says: "You have a range of physical and sexual abuse situations where the parent is either alleged to be, or been proved to, abuse the child."
  
  "As you know," he adds, confidentially, "there have been a number of deaths in Massachusetts."When asked to name an actual child's death he was referring to, however, he said he could not remember.
  
  Straus has been part of an informal matrix of lawyers, judges, social workers, academics and domestic violence activists since the early 1990s.These people, some idealistic and some merely pragmatic, have networked, talked with each other, served on various commissions, boosted each other' s careers, and helped to expand the definition of domestic violence, and the size of state and federal funding massively.
  
  Straus is a leader now, and heads what is called the Supervised Visitation Network.He described the growth of that group in glowing, emotional terms during a phone interview.
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  Though The Meeting Place began in 1991 with only a grant from the Boston Bar Foundation, and continued to 1998 "without a penny of public money" that public money is starting to flow now, Straus admits with a tone of satisfaction.
  
  The major state source is through the state DSS Domestic Violence Unit, whose budget of over $900,000 "has been an immense advance over the last few years.."
  
  What if the father doesn't have enough money to see his kid in a given week?"Difficult question," answers Straus, who pauses and then says the father gets "a week's grace" and then the child-father contact is cut off.
  
  His program never tries to get husbands and wives to talk out their problems privately, he said, but urges them to go back to court instead.He said children are in visitation for long periods, from nine months to many years.He said that no matter how well, how happily, the father-child interaction is going, his program never recommends to the judge that supervision should end and normal parent-child contact resume.

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  MenWeb Battered Men: The Booming Domestic Violence... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 8/13/2001    Last Visited: 5/18/2002  

  "All these visitations have been ordered because the children involved are at risk," explains Robert Straus, a lawyer and social worker, and currently director of the Meeting Place, in Cambridge.Straus has been a key figure in our state's development of professional supervised visitation.Asked to explain "at risk", he says: "You have a range of physical and sexual abuse situations where the parent is either alleged to be, or been proved to, abuse the child."
  
  "As you know," he adds, confidentially, "there have been a number of deaths in Massachusetts."When asked to name an actual child's death he was referring to, however, he said he could not remember.
  
  Straus has been part of an informal matrix of lawyers, judges, social workers, academics and domestic violence activists since the early 1990s.These people, some idealistic and some merely pragmatic, have networked, talked with each other, served on various commissions, boosted each other' s careers, and helped to expand the definition of domestic violence, and the size of state and federal funding massively.
  
  Straus is a leader now, and heads what is called the Supervised Visitation Network.He described the growth of that group in glowing, emotional terms during a phone interview.
  
  "The Supervised Visitation Network started in 1992.A group of people met in New York through the Ethical Culture Society, which had started a supervised visitation program in New York City.At that point it was just 30 people from around the country, most of whom had never met anyone else doing supervision.We had all been working in isolation.It was an extremely high energy meeting.It was very much an informal association of people helping each other out.
  ...
  Though The Meeting Place began in 1991 with only a grant from the Boston Bar Foundation, and continued to 1998 "without a penny of public money" that public money is starting to flow now, Straus admits with a tone of satisfaction.
  
  The major state source is through the state DSS Domestic Violence Unit, whose budget of over $900,000 "has been an immense advance over the last few years.."
  
  What if the father doesn't have enough money to see his kid in a given week?"Difficult question," answers Straus, who pauses and then says the father gets "a week's grace" and then the child-father contact is cut off.
  
  His program never tries to get husbands and wives to talk out their problems privately, he said, but urges them to go back to court instead.He said children are in visitation for long periods, from nine months to many years.He said that no matter how well, how happily, the father-child interaction is going, his program never recommends to the judge that supervision should end and normal parent-child contact resume.
  
  These programs have sprung up all across America.Entrepreneurial tricks and ideas spread easily each summer at this industry's conferences.Wherever supervised visitation has appeared, criticism has followed.

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  Supervised Visitation Network - Board of Directors - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 9/14/2008    Last Visited: 9/14/2008  

  Robert B. Straus, DMH, JD, a psychologist and lawyer was Senior Psychologist of the Family Service Clinic from 1982 to 1988, conducting custody and visitation evaluations for the Middlesex County Family Court.From 1988, he served frequently as Guardian ad Litem in high-conflict custody and access disputes.
  
  In 1991, Dr. Straus started Meeting Place: Supervised Child Access Service, a program of The Guidance Center, Inc. in Cambridge, MA, providing a safe setting in which children in high-risk situations can visit parents with whom they are not living.
  
  He is a founder of the Supervised Visitation Network.He was President of the Network in 1993-4, helped draft the Network's Standards and Guidelines for practice, and served on the Board of Directors.
  
  From 1995 through 2000 he was Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Coalition for Supervised Visitation, and in that capacity worked with the Governor's Commission on Responsible Fatherhood and the Supervised Visitation Task Force of the Probate and Family Court; he continues as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Coalition.
  
  Dr. Straus has a private psychotherapy practice, working with couples and children, and remains the Program Director of Meeting Place.

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  Supervised Visitation Network - Child Access Social... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/20/2000    Last Visited: 9/14/2008  

  Robert B. Straus, D.M.H., J.D.Director, The Meeting Place

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  Supervised Visitation Network - Child Access Social... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/14/2000    Last Visited: 4/9/2007  

  The development of the original draft was undertaken by the co-chairs of the SVN Standards and Guidelines Committee: Glynne Gervais and Heidi Levenback with the assistance of Rob Straus, past President of SVN.

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  Supervised Visitation Network - Child Access Social... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 1/31/2006    Last Visited: 10/12/2007  

  Rob Straus

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