Hands of hope decorate local courtrooms

April 24, 2019

Fort Pierce -

About 230 children in Okeechobee and the Treasure Coast went home to stronger, healthier families this past year after time apart for a variety of reasons – most commonly substance-abuse related.

About 30 more are expected to go home this month, many of them spending today - Father's Day - with their own dads.

Communities Connected for Kids and Judicial Circuit 19 are celebrating these families throughout the month, beginning with a ceremonial Hanging of the Hands in county courtrooms.

The hands – construction-paper cutouts strung along the walls of dependency courtrooms in Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee and St. Lucie counties – represent the children who went home from the foster-care system between May 2018 and this month.

But they do much more than that. They celebrate the triumph of hard work, love and commitment over social ills, such as substance abuse, that lead to the removal of children from their homes.

Most importantly, they offer a glimmer of hope for families just beginning their journey into the foster-care system.

“This is one of the worst moments of their lives,” said Jerra Wisecup, CCKids licensing & caregiver support specialist.

“They are people who just lost their children, they just entered a very complicated and confusing system, and they are unsure of what the future may bring or even when their children will come home," Wisecup said.

The hands in the courtroom demonstrate to these families that reunification is within their reach and that their families can be whole again, Kaiser said.

Another way the judicial and child-welfare community is celebrating reunified families this month is with a social-media awareness and education campaign. The campaign includes a special recognition of reunification heroes – case managers, substance abuse and mental-health providers and others in the community who help make the return of children to their families possible.

And to mark the occasion, those families will receive a family goody bag containing card games, snacks, family bowling passes courtesy of St. Lucie Lanes and, in Martin County, vouchers to Chick Fil A donated by the restaurant chain.

Pictured in the top photo is Judicial Circuit 19 Dependency Judge for Martin County Steven Levin.

Pictured in the middle photo, CCKids Court Liaison Todd Trumpore prepares a string of paper hands to decorate the dependency courtroom of the St. Lucie County Courthouse.

And pictured bottom, from left, are Shaniece Patacer, Angela Yearwood, Dee VanDuser, Sheri Wargnier, Judicial Circuit 19 Dependency Judge for Indian River County Michael J. Linn, CCKids Indian River County Manager Caryn Toole, Mira Wesley, Andrea Crawley and Brooke Gaylord.