Family PEACE Program

Ambulatory Care Network Community Programs

Overview

The Family PEACE (Promoting, Education, Advocacy, Collaboration, and Empowerment) Program is dedicated to improving the safety and well-being of mothers and children who have been exposed to violence in their homes; fostering stronger parent child bonds, offering coping strategies, educational guidance, and healthier conflict resolution skills while preventing the perpetuation of family violence.

To address the effects of domestic violence on children and on mothers' parenting, the FPP combines several evidence-based intervention models to create an integrated treatment program for mothers and children aged zero to eighteen (0-18) living with domestic violence. Children aged zero to five (0-5) and their mothers receive Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), children aged six to twelve (6-12) participate in the Kids' Club while their mothers participate in a Parenting Group that runs concurrently with the children's group, and teens aged thirteen to eighteen (13-18) participate in a twelve week group.

Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) is a relationship-based treatment approach for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers and their parent who are experiencing mental health problems and/or whose relationship to their caregiver is negatively affected as a result of domestic violence. The family meets weekly with a clinician who is an expert in infant mental health and the effects of trauma and violence on children and their parents. CPP services are provided to the family for one year.

Kids' Club is a twelve week program for children 6-12yrs of age. The group helps enhance children's social skills, self-esteem, and reality testing. For children who have witnessed domestic violence, group work can reduce the sense of isolation and shame, normalize experiences and feelings, and mobilize mutual support and acknowledgement of each other's needs and experiences.

The Parenting Group is a twelve week group intervention program aimed at strengthening and improving the parent-child relationship. A primary goal of the group is to help parents understand their children and their experience. Parents learn new ways to communicate with their children, improve their capacity to calm their children, feel more confident in their parenting, use effective behavioral interventions, and understand the importance of behaviors and feelings in addressing discipline. The Parenting Group runs concurrently with Kids' Club.

Group Treatment for Adolescents Exposed to Domestic Violence Like Kids Club, this group treatment program recognizes the importance of peer relationships in adolescence and targets teens aged 13 to 18 who have been living in households with domestic violence. The goals of the program are to help these teens cope more effectively and be able to reflect on their own experiences. The groups focus on the teens' own relationships and promote healthy behavior and communication with partners, peers, and family.

MISSION

The Family PEACE Program's mission is to improve identification and intervention services for families living with domestic violence who are receiving care in the Ambulatory Care Network's (ACN) Northern Manhattan primary care and specialty practices.

GOALS

The Family PEACE Program aims at creating a more comprehensive response in identifying, referring and treating families exposed to domestic violence. This is accomplished by strengthening community partnerships and cross-agency protocols, implementing evidence and theory based interventions, and offering education and training to community partners and New York Presbyterian staff.

OUTREACH

The Program, with funding from the Department of Justice's Office of Victims of Crime, launched in 2008 a public awareness media campaign aimed at Latino families living with domestic violence to provide information about the impact of the violence on children and how to reach the Family PEACE Program for treatment.

With funding support from the Avon Foundation, the Family PEACE Program will provide workshops for partner agency domestic violence clients that focus on the impact of violence exposure on children and their development, and on parenting children who have been exposed to domestic violence. To help raise awareness in the local community and provide information about the program's services, workshops will be conducted at five public elementary schools in Washington Heights/Inwood that participate in New York Presbyterian Hospital's Healthy Schools Healthy Families Turn 2 Us Comprehensive Wellness Program.

Through the Avon initiative, the program will also lead a training seminar with participating organizations of the Washington Heights/Inwood Coalition Against Domestic Violence (WH/ICADV) on how to identify, screen and refer mothers and their children living with violence.

COALITION MEMBERS

In an effort to provide a comprehensive and coordinated response to families exposed to domestic violence, the Family PEACE program works collaboratively with various community and government agencies and participates in community coalitions focused on domestic violence. With the goal of breaking the cycle of family violence, FPP provides education and training in the community and within the hospital and clinics at New York Presbyterian. Since its inception, the Program has trained more that 1,000 medical providers and staff on domestic violence identification and intervention.

FPP has been recognized regionally and nationally for its expertise in innovative programs services for children and immigrants living with family violence. The Program was selected in 2005 by the United States Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention as one of 15 Safe Start Promising Approaches sites nationwide.

FPP also received an award from the United States Department of Health and Human Services to be one of three national sites to create an integrated model for working with immigrant families living with domestic violence.

POPULATIONS SERVED

The Family PEACE Program primarily serves families in the northern Manhattan community, including Harlem, Washington Heights, and Inwood. We also receive referrals from other agencies through out New York City.

FPP provides services to children ages 0-18yrs that have been exposed to domestic violence. Domestic violence, a pattern of assaultive and coercive behaviors that one uses against his/her intimate partner, can include physical aggression, intimidation, threats, controlling behavior and forced sexual acts. Children's exposure includes in-utero exposure, when a child observes, intervenes, is victimized, participates in the violence, is an eyewitness, hears the assault, observes the initial effects, experiences the aftermath of violence, or overhears conversations about the assault.