Unaddressed early childhood adversity hurts children, families, and communities. A family's ability to provide stable, nurturing relationships and environments that children need to thrive can be disrupted by household and community factors. These factors include:

• Traumatic events
• Poverty
• Violence
• Racism and discrimination
• Substance use
• Caregiver's mental illness
• Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse
• Neglect

But there is good news!  When children have the benefit of at least one buffering adult, it diminishes the negative impacts of toxic stress and adversity, changing the narrative for their families.

The PEACE Clinical Program can help!

Services available to families in St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and St. Charles County:

• Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), an in-home intervention consisting of 10 weekly, hour-long sessions that engages parent coaches to help caregivers provide nurturing care and responsive, predictable environments that young children need in order to thrive, build resilience and regulate emotions.
  • Eligibility: Any family with a child between 6 months and 48 months old.

• Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), a therapeutic treatment for children who have experienced at least one traumatic event and/or demonstrate mental health, attachment, or behavioral challenges. Sessions, which include the child and primary caregiver, are aimed at restoring the child’s cognitive, behavioral, and social functioning.
  • Eligibility: Families with children birth through age 5 who have had a stressful experience.

Benefits of participating in PEACE services

• Caregivers learn to recognize their children's signals for distress and to play in ways that help them develop healthy brain connections for better emotion and behavior regulation.
• Caregivers recognize and build on their own strengths and may experience fewer symptoms of parenting stress and depression.
• Children develop critical relationship and developmental skills that have long-term benefits. They learn to rely on and trust their parents, which promotes independence, self-esteem, and self-control.

Who is eligible?

PEACE services can be especially helpful for families who are:

• Involved in foster care or foster care division
• Parenting under challenging circumstances
• Living in homes with interpersonal violence and/or poverty
• Transitioning between caregivers
• Have caregivers with mental illness or substance use issues
• Caring for children who have experienced any kind of early adversity or are exhibiting behaviors such as tantrums, biting, separation anxiety, or have experienced abuse or neglect

For more information about this program, please contact Brittany Graham at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 314-773-1399.