Family Services
These services are offered to families who are involved with Missouri Children’s Division but can be provided to others in the community who may be eligible. Parenting classes are offered to parents in the community at large.
Supervised Visitation
Helping to keep families connected.
Supervised Visitation and Safe Custody Exchange enable children to maintain connections with parents with whom they are not living by protecting the physical and emotional safety of the children and their families, including the safety of parents who have been victims of domestic violence.
Supervised Visitation takes place on-site at EPIC offices or at an approved local setting.
Qualified “monitors” observe visits in the safe setting. Visits do not serve as opportunities for evaluations. Monitors can identify needs for other services described below such as Nurturing Parent, Service Delivery Coordination, Parent Aide or Parenting Inside Out and make recommendations accordingly but they are not there to make assessments or evaluations.
Enhanced Supervised Visitation
EPIC provides Enhanced Supervised Visitations where parents have been identified as in need for intervention of some sort. The most basic is where the monitor develops a plan to be a part of the visit to help facilitate relationship building which may include taking part in games or activities with the family.
Supervised Custody Exchange
The Supervised Custody Exchange program allows EPIC staff to provide parents or guardians in high conflict situations a safe and neutral place for exchanges of children that occur when visitations require Parties who are involved in high conflict divorce, paternity, modifications, Child Protection or Adult Abuse cases where children are involved are all appropriate for the program. It is free to the parents at this point and a court ordered is required.
Service Delivery Coordination
When parents have a Written Service Agreement or an order from the court to obtain certain services, Service Delivery Coordination can be arranged. In this situation, a person familiar with navigating agencies that provide services in the community can help the parent(s) obtain the service needed by providing transportation or help understanding and/or filling out forms or identifying appropriate agencies to begin with.
Parent Aide
When a parent needs assistance in the home with things like establishing a safe physical/home environment, basic life skills, or age-appropriate parenting skills, a parent aide can be assigned to the family. These services are designed to take place in the home typically with the children present.
Transportation
EPIC can help transport individuals, including parents and children, to most services.
Nurturing Parenting
With this program, parents take an assessment that seeks to help identify strengths and weaknesses with parenting. A facilitator then uses individual lessons that are designed to help the parent develop positive parenting skills with nurturing behaviors, promote healthy physical and emotional development, and teach appropriate role and developmental expectations. These can happen in the home or on site but typically happen before a supervised visit and the parent then applies the lesson during the visit.
Parenting Inside Out
EPIC offers parenting classes to the community at large using the Parenting Inside Out curriculum which is an evidence-based parenting skills training program. Classes typically last 12 weeks (although some classes may be combined) and are taught on a rotating basis. 