Love Well and Grow Well (with Alison Peak)

In this episode, Dr. Matt Biel speaks with Alison Peak, a clinical social workerspecializing in early childhood mental health and the Executive Director of AlliedBehavioral Health Solutions, a behavioral health practice with sites across Tennessee.Before any of that, Alison grew up deep in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, in aplace where predictable routines created safety even during times of scarcity, andwhere relationships were the foundation of a wide web of informal support.In their conversation, Alison and Matt explore the difference between formal systems,the agencies with long acronyms and eligibility requirements, and the informal ones, thenetworks of relationships and predictable rhythms that decide who shows up for whomwhen times get hard.Alison’s clinical anchor is a definition she returns to often. “My favorite definition of infantand early childhood mental health is the capacity to love well and grow well.”For young children, she explains, relationships are not one factor among many. Theyare the thing that determines whether a child makes it to adulthood at all.