Who We Are
Family Forward Advocacy CT provides advocacy, education, and community support to parents and caregivers in Connecticut and nationally who are raising attachment-disrupted and developmentally traumatized children, and elevates the lived experience voice for child welfare policy reform.
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Our Why
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Nearly half of U.S. children — approximately 34 million — have experienced at least one potentially traumatic early childhood event, and an estimated 90% of children in foster care (33% of which enter under the age of 3) have experienced trauma that can alter brain development and impair attachment and emotional regulation.
While Connecticut offers trauma-informed child welfare initiatives, care coordination programs, and community-based behavioral health services, it lacks a comprehensive, coordinated program specifically designed to support permanency and parents raising children who struggle with impaired attachment histories. As a result, caregivers navigating child behavioral crises linked to attachment challenges encounter poorly prepared, fragmented systems across child welfare, education, and mental health sectors, increasing the risk of family destabilization, crisis interventions, traumatic removals, and preventable foster and group home placement. Our nonprofit, Family Forward Advocacy CT, is committed to coming alongside parents to provide support, teach de-escalation parenting skills, build a supportive community, and restore resilience to support family integrity outcomes.
We Are Community
Our team of moms and dads, parents with lived experience and purpose, knows how hard it is to parent through trauma and navigate child-serving systems. We know the impact of early traumatic experiences on kids, especially pre-verbal, is misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and often viewed as a "parenting problem". We know that raising typical kids and keeping a home while working is one thing, but add a child with complex needs to the mix and it can be chaotic, exhausting, isolating, overwhelming, and even dangerous.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE!​​
Let us help you be even more AWESOME, BRAVE & CONFIDENT than you already are!
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~ Support The Work ~
Our Mission
We Are Community
Our team of advocates, moms and dads, parents with lived experience and purpose, knows how hard it is to parent through trauma and navigate child-serving systems. We know that raising neurotypical kids and keeping a home while working is one thing, but add a child with complex needs to the mix and it can be chaotic and exhausting, isolating, overwhelming, and even dangerous.
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IT TAKES A VILLAGE.
Our team, in CT and nationally, supports parents and leads reform. Collectively, we can help you become more skilled, organized, and effective so you can be the exceptional therapeutic parent and impactful advocate for change you know you are and want to be. We offer a variety of services and trainings to help you parent more effectively, advocate more resourcefully, stay more organized throughout your day, and be more present for your family. We also provide public policy advocacy training for those who want to "fix" the ill-prepared state systems you've encountered along your journey.
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Let us help you be even more AWESOME and BRAVE than you already are! ​
'19 Meeting w/ CT DCF Commissioner, Vannessa Dorantes
Reshaping Voluntary Services through Parent Voice
FFACT Co-Founders
Maureen O'Neill-Davis & Cheryl Brown
These two forever ​moms are a fierce duo. They met by chance while advocating for a common purpose. They lead parallel lives - ten years apart. Both adopted sibling groups with complex trauma histories and attachment disruption-rooted behaviors. Both saw a need to offer support to parents on similar paths AND reform the antiquated child welfare and ill-prepared Children's Behavioral Health Care systems they encountered. These systems failed them and their struggling kids, putting everyone at risk. Their efforts spawned real reform in Connecticut. Together with a national partner, Family Forward Foundation, they helped craft national foster care finance reform legislation.
CT Policy Initiative -
Restoring Parental Rights: Because Families Can Heal
Family Forward Advocacy CT (FFACT) is championing legislation to establish a legal pathway for Restoration of Parental Rights (RPR) in Connecticut. This initiative would allow courts to consider reinstating parental rights for children and youth whose parents' rights were previously terminated, but who remain in DCF custody without permanent families, including those whose adoptions have dissolved. With similar legislation already enacted in 24 other states, FFACT hopes an RPR bill will be raised through the Connecticut General Assembly's Children's Committee during the 2027 legislative session. The goal is simple: give families who have experienced separation and meaningful change a second chance at reunification when it is safe, appropriate, and in the child's best interests.
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Why is this reform urgently needed?
Since 2024, Connecticut media have extensively documented serious safety concerns, abuse allegations, and inadequate therapeutic care in DCF group homes, alongside broader challenges within the state's congregate care and children's mental health systems. For some children who have become legal orphans, prolonged institutional placements can mean growing up without the stability, belonging, and lifelong connections of family. RPR would provide a carefully reviewed legal opportunity to restore those bonds, reduce unnecessary reliance on costly congregate care, and promote healing and lasting permanency. Children deserve more than a placement. They deserve the opportunity for a family
Your Voice Can Help Restore Families.
Be Part of the Change.
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If this issue matters to you, we urge you to contact FFACT and make your voice heard. Whether you are a parent, professional, advocate, concerned community member, or an adult with lived experience of prolonged group home or congregate care placement—or someone who aged out of state care without adequate support or lasting family connections—your perspective and personal experiences can help shape this important legislation.
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As we work toward advancing Restoration of Parental Rights legislation in Connecticut's 2027 legislative session, we need your voices, your stories, and your support. Together, we can help lawmakers recognize the urgent need for reform and create a pathway for children and families to reconnect, heal, and find lasting permanency.
Contact FFACT today. Your voice could help open the door to a second chance at family.
Policy Work - Connecticut
In 2017, FFACT was the energy behind CT'sSA 17-6 An Act Establishing a Task Force to Study Voluntary Admission to the DCF. Although the Task Force never convened, the focus on trading custody for care shifted minds. Trading custody (and decision-making authority by way of a neglect petition) to access complex need care through both voluntary (coerced) and involuntary (court-ordered) processes harms kids and destroys families. Our lobbying efforts and media exposure kept this practice in the public eye and led to change.
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CT's Department of Children and Families moved its Voluntary Services Program out of its core services and away from its "parent policing" model of family engagement. Beacon Health Options now administers it as Voluntary Care Management and informs it with a "How can we help?" approach.
Learn more at Voluntary Care Management
Support our state advocacy work.
Connecticut Special Act 17-6
Study Voluntary Admission to DCF Task Force
Federal Policy Work -
Family First Prevention Services Act
Federal legislation passed in Feb. 2018
The first foster care financing bill in over 20-years, the FFPSA aims to support family integrity, strengthen families and kinship placements, and prevent kids at risk of child welfare involvement from going into foster care. Mental health care access is one of those areas of focus. States are currently developing implementation plans, strategies, and service delivery array to comply with this law.
Learn more about targetted outcomes at:
Family Forst Prevention Services Act - Fact Sheet
Support our national advocacy work.
