Who We Are
Our Mission
Family Forward Advocacy CT (FFACT) provides invaluable support to parents raising attachment-disrupted and developmentally traumatized children including those families formed through adoption.
FFACT advocates for parents, develops parent partnerships, and strives to strengthen family integrity practices across child-serving systems. We build awareness of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the impact of attachment disruption on children and their families, and we empower the voices of parents committed to both parenting through trauma and advocating for change.
We Are Community
Our team of moms and dads, parents with lived experience and purpose, know 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 complex need child to the mix and it can be chaotic, exhausting, isolating, overwhelming, and even dangerous.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
We offer services, events, and support in these domains:
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Advocate Services - Direct Services to Parents & Defense Attorney Coordinated Support
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Advocacy Training - Empower Your Voice to Advocate for your Child's Special Needs; Public Policy Reform ACTion Planning, Coaching & Organizing
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Education - Therapeutic Parenting Live Discussions & Webinars; Activate Your Voice Advocacy Planning Course and Parent Mentoring; Parenting Thru Trauma Podcast
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Information and Resource Sharing, News, Links, Talks, and Partner Introductions
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Connection - Professional Representation and Clinical Services Referrals
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Outreach - Provider Partnership Services and Parent Support Group
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Networking - Federal Child Welfare Public Policy Reform Action Opportunities in concert with Family Forward Foundation, the Family Forward Project, and the Grandma Warriors
Let us help you be even more
AWESOME, BRAVE & CONFIDENT
then you already are!
~ Support The Work ~
We Are Community
Our team of moms and dads, parents with lived experience and purpose, know how hard it is to parent through trauma and navigate child-serving systems. We Know that raising typical kids and keeping a home while working is one thing, but add a complex need child to the mix and it can be chaotic and exhausting, isolating, overwhelming, and even dangerous.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
Our Family Forward team can help you become more skilled and organized, and more effective so you can be the exceptional therapeutic parent and advocate you know you are and want to be. We provide a variety of services and training to help you be more effective in your parenting, a more resourceful advocate, more organized and calm in your day, and 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.
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. And together with a national partner, Family Forward Foundation, their efforts helped craft national foster care finance reform legislation.
Support Our Policy Reform Work
Connecticut Special Act 17-6
Study Voluntary Admission to DCF Task Force
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, focus on the issue of 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) process, harms kids and destroys families. Our lobby efforts and generated media exposure kept this practice in the public eye leading to change.
CT's Department of Children and Families shifted its Voluntary Services Program out of its core services and "parent policing" model of family engagement. It is now administered by Beacon Health Options as Voluntary Care Management and informed by a "How can we help?" approach.
Learn more at Voluntary Care Management
Support our state advocacy work.
Family First Prevention Services Act
Federal Legislation Passed 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:
Support our national advocacy work.
