Focus Area: Early Childhood

Grant Amount: $12,000

Based in Minnetonka, serves the Twin Cities metro area. St. David’s is a long-established children’s mental health organization serving more than 2,500 children, adults, and families each year. Several years ago, St. David’s launched the Family Place program in St. David’s Harmon Center in downtown Minneapolis. The center especially reaches out to East African families as an expansion of work around autism in that community. The Family Place works in both classroom and home settings with children who either have a mental health diagnosis or are in a high stress environment to help cultivate critical skills that are the foundation of early learning and kindergarten success.

Grant supports improving child readiness by book-ending the day treatment classroom and home-based interventions with pre- and post-family engagement. Afterward, it will provide weekly skill development or outpatient psychotherapy as children transition out of the classroom and into kindergarten. Providers in this program are culturally diverse and are part of the different cultural communities that they serve.