Family Enhancement Center Nest Program

The Family Enhancement Center was founded in 1993 as the Center for Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment. The motivation came from three passionate therapists who identified a need in our community to help our most vulnerable members: children experiencing abuse and neglect.

Since 1993, the Family Enhancement Center has expanded its services and we now offer parent education support programs, a full range of counseling services, parent assessments, and in home parent development services.

The Family Enhancement Center currently provides help to over 200 families and over 600 children dealing with abuse issues in Minneapolis, St. Paul and the greater Twin Cities area. Our prevention education programs and workshops reach even more parents and professionals. We're a small organization but our reach is wide!

The mission of Family Enhancement Center is to create lasting solutions to prevent and heal child abuse.

One of the programs we have implemented to help us with this mission is called the Nest Program. 

The Nest Program provides support for families struggling with child management issues either due to a parent or child’s mental health, family trauma or other stressful circumstances that make parenting difficult. Our program matches a volunteer parent mentor with a family. This trained mentor helps parents identify child and parent strengths, grow their social and parenting skills, learn behavioral and emotional de-escalation techniques and connect parents with community resources.

Volunteers will receive training to become mentors in our Nest Program, with the goal of strengthening families and preventing child abuse. The Nest Program is designed to support families struggling with child management issues either due to a parent or child’s mental health, family trauma or other stressful circumstances that make parenting difficult.