FYN Covers Kid’s Kottage: Exclusive Tom Porter Video & Interview

In May of 2008 the Georgia General Assembly signed into the law the Gilmer County Kids’ Kottage Commission. The purpose of the commission is to ensure that Gilmer County families, who are under court ordered supervised visitations, may have a safe and secure place to stage the visitations.The government sanctioned Kottage will be used by the Gilmer County Department of Family and Children’s Services (DFACs) for the Independent Living Program. The ILP consists of workshops for teenagers living in foster care designed to help with the transition from adolescence to adulthood. There will also be training for those individuals interested in becoming foster parents, as well as visitation programs for extended family members.

Those children who, because of abuse or neglect issues, are only allowed supervised visits with non-custodial parents, will be recommended to the Kids Kottage by the Gilmer County Superior and Juvenile Courts.

Tom Porter, Kids Kottage Commission Chair, sat down in an exclusive FYN interview to discuss the merits of the Kids Kottage project. He spoke of the need for children in these dire situations to have a child friendly environment to have supervised visitations. Some of the requirements for the parents include drug testing, which will be provided by the Kottage.

“A lot of it (supervised visitations) required drug testing, and the only place to do it was the county jail. So what we found was that we were having visitation between children and their non-custodial parents in the county jail. And I just didn’t figure that was exactly right” Porter said.

Porter said that the “Kids Kottage Commission is the first of its kind in the state, and to my knowledge, the first of its kind in the country.”

Porter said that other counties have had to resort to using “the basement of a church” or “a donated trailer.”

Porter said that he and his fellow Commission members decided, “We’re going to start this thing and build it until we run out of money, and so far we haven’t run out of money.”

This is at least partly due to tireless efforts and donations from organizations such as: The Gilmer County Home Builders Association; Gilmer County Family Connections; Gilmer County DFACS; The Appalachian District of Superior Court; The Domestic Violence Task Force; Gilmer County Schools; Gilmer County Government; as well as the Cities of Ellijay and East Ellijay.

The Kids Kottage projected opening date is September 1, 2011.

4-14 Tom Porter Gives Update On Construction of Kids Kottage from Fetch on Vimeo.