With "equal regard": an overview of how Ellen Pence focused the supervised visitation field on battered women and children.

Ellen Pence has changed the framework for doing supervised visitation and safe exchanges in cases of domestic violence. Ellen challenged the basic tenets of "neutrality" and a primary focus on "safety for children" in the supervised visitation field. By incorporating equal regard for the safety of adult victims of domestic violence and children, Ellen challenged supervised visitation centers to reexamine their mission, role, intake/orientation, documentation, and rules for their programming. She designed services for supervised visitation that would account for battering of women and children while not being excessively policing and providing a respectful and fair atmosphere for men who batter.