Juvenile
Aug. 10, 2002
Courthouse Waiting Room Offers Kids Fun
LOS ANGELES - It's a big room with a jungle-safari theme - and it's packed with stuffed animals, toys, books and all the colorful things that promise magic and fun to pint-size adventurers.
Kids' Place, the first of 14 waiting rooms for children that soon will appear in Los Angeles County's courthouses, opened for business Thursday in Long Beach.
"This is a dream come true for many people," Superior Court Judge Deborah Andrews said at a preview of the facilities held Wednesday evening.
Andrews is credited with being the genesis for the project, which is financed by a grant from the Proposition 10 Commission through taxes on cigarettes.
The Long Beach waiting room is designed to be a learning center as well as a safe haven for kids generally found running in crowded hallways or shifting uncomfortably on hard benches during proceedings they don't understand.
Parents who leave their kids in the waiting room will not be charged a fee. However, they will be required to show their court papers for that day and complete identification forms. The waiting room will be open five days a week.
Andrews said the old courthouse on Ocean Boulevard is so space-emaciated that broom closets quickly become offices. No one was quite sure where to put the children's waiting room until county Supervisor Don Knabe stepped forward and donated his field office on the ground floor to make room for the children's facility.
"Supervisor Knabe gave us the last essential: space," Andrews said.
Knabe quipped that his former field office "had never looked so clean."
Kids' Place, he said, "beats [children] hanging out in courtrooms and hallways" and being traumatized by things they don't understand.
"I'm really proud that this day has come, [and] I look forward to this being countywide," Knabe said. "I have never seen the bureaucracy work this fast to make this day possible."
Completed in six weeks, Kids' Place was designed by For the Child, a nonprofit child-abuse prevention organization. For the Child worked in collaboration with county and court officials to cut through red tape that could have kept the project from fruition.
"This is all about protecting our children," said Beverly Fancher, executive director of For the Child. "Judge Andrews has been tireless in her efforts to make this real."
Other children's waiting rooms in various parts of the county will be financed by what was described as a slight increase in court filing fees.
Cheryl Romo
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