A two generation approach differs from models that provide services to parents and their children separately. A two generation program and its policies aim to engage families in ways that address both groups simultaneously.

Two generation approaches also address and focus on the core tenant of child development findings – that parents, especially in the beginning years are critical to children’s healthy development. These first relationships between parents and children hold the answers to how we become who we are.

Almost 50% of the young women who have come through our programs report having aged out of the Department of Children and Families. Many were removed early on from their own mothers and placed in state custody. 35% of these women become mothers themselves whose own children now have involvement with/are in the custody of these very systems they recently aged out of.

While the intergenerational cycle of prostitution here is not unique to the U.S., the extremity of the cruelty and chaos that accompany it are. With each generation there is more erosion…

The EVA Center is an opportunity to break this intergenerational cycle for the young boys and girls who are now just beginning the cycle. True prevention would involve creating an attachment-based program that can help foster mutual healing and connection between these most profoundly traumatized mother/mothers to be and their children. Our vision of the EVA Center safe home is to create a trauma responsive community that will provide reunified mothers and their children an opportunity to attach and develop strong parent-child relationships as they strive to exit out of sexual exploitation.