Children and Family Futures

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Children and Family Futures

Children and Family Futures operates a wholly owned small business entity, the Center for Children and Family Futures.

Children and Family Futures strives to prevent child abuse and neglect while improving safety, permanency, well-being, and recovery outcomes for all children, parents and families affected by trauma, substance use and mental health disorders. WHO WE ARE:

Children and Family Futures is a nonprofit organization celebrating 25 years with a national impact providing consultation, training and technic

al assistance, strategic planning, and evaluation services focused on improving practice and policy at the intersections of child welfare, substance use and mental disorder treatment, and court systems. Our decades of experience are focused on practice, policy, and evaluation that supports Tribes, states, regions, and communities to improve outcomes for children, their parents, extended families, and communities. Children and Family Futures delivers award-winning services for its funders and customers on behalf of the children and families whose lives we seek to improve. Responding to over 11,000 training and technical assistance requests in over 450 sites and conducting program evaluations and performance management with more than 100 sites has enabled us to develop planning and implementation methods that ensure the effectiveness of our services.

08/24/2026

"Imagine being in a pool of water just below the surface. You can feel the sun and hear the birds, but you can't breathe."

That's how Deena Davis described the experience of family separation at the RISE26 Conference session in Nashville, TN, and it stopped the room.

Beyond her lived experience, Deena has served as a peer support specialist and now leads statewide family treatment court efforts in Georgia. Her presence on the panel wasn't symbolic. It was structural, a demonstration of what an FTC is designed to produce when it works.

The session brought together Deena's perspective alongside Tonya Suarez's clinical insight from Sullivan County, NH, and Jacqui Baker's statewide implementation strategy from New Hampshire. The panel showed what becomes possible when lived experience, clinical care, and systems leadership are all at the table at the same time.

When those perspectives align, we work together differently. If your jurisdiction is building or strengthening an FTC and wants to understand what that kind of cross-system alignment looks like in practice, that's the conversation CFF is here for.

👉 Schedule a consultation: https://airtable.com/appt7JA9HCGhKfjPw/pag7cXcGYbaEFMPQh/form?utm_source=social&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=behind-the-scenes&utm_content=ftc-riseaug2026

08/20/2026

Over the past six months, Children and Family Futures (CFF) published a series on the START (Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Teams) model — what it is, how it works, and what it actually takes to implement it.

If you missed any of it, here's where to begin:
• February: What START is — and what it isn't
• March: Why early, coordinated support changes outcomes for families
• April: The case for embedded family mentors as trained, supervised team members
• May: What the research actually shows — and what it doesn't claim
• June: How cross-system coordination works in practice, not just in principle
• July: A practical guide for leaders who are closer to implementation than they think

If something in this series made you wonder whether START could work in your jurisdiction, that's the right question to bring to us.
https://www.cffutures.org/start-contact-us/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=field-education&utm_content=start-articlerecapaug2026

Read the full series here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/children-and-family-futures/posts/?feedView=articles

08/19/2026

What if fewer children entered foster care not because we intervened faster, but because we kept the family intact while a parent got treatment?

That's the premise behind family treatment courts. When a parent gets treatment instead of a case closure, when recovery and reunification are happening at the same time, that's prevention. Not just for this family, but for the next generation.

According to peer-reviewed research, families served by family treatment courts are 170% more likely to reunify and 58% more likely to achieve permanency.

Children and Family Futures helps build this in states and counties across the country, so no jurisdiction has to figure it out alone.

Ready to talk? Request a consultation with the National FTC Training and Technical Assistance program.

👉 https://airtable.com/appt7JA9HCGhKfjPw/pag7cXcGYbaEFMPQh/form

08/18/2026

Collaboratives usually know something isn't working. What they rarely know is why.

Across the collaboratives CFF's Research and Evaluation Team has worked with, the CVI consistently surfaces the same pattern: partners aren't actually disagreeing about the goal. They're operating from different, unstated assumptions about how to get there, and no one had named it out loud until the data did.

That's the difference between a collaborative that stays stuck and one that moves.

Does that pattern sound familiar in your own collaborative? Tell us where.

08/17/2026

One reason leaders hesitate on START isn't the model. It's the assumption that implementation is something they'd have to figure out on their own.

They don't.

When a jurisdiction becomes a START affiliate through Children and Family Futures (CFF), they get the infrastructure that makes implementation work: training and practice materials, structured onboarding, monthly coaching and technical assistance, and fidelity support across the full arc of implementation.

The learning curve is real. But every jurisdiction that has implemented START has had CFF's training and technical assistance team in their corner from early planning through sustained practice.

You don't have to have it all figured out before you reach out.

www.cffutures.org/letsgetstarted

08/14/2026

Is your jurisdiction's Plan of Safe Care (POSC) implementation as strong as it could be?

Join our free 30-minute webinar on the newly published POSC Implementation Readiness Self-Assessment Tool, designed for the collaborative teams doing this work daily: child welfare, hospitals, , treatment providers, and early intervention professionals.

📅 Thursday, August 20, 2026
🕐 11–11:30 a.m. (Pacific) / 2–2:30 p.m. (Eastern)

This session walks through how to use the tool to strengthen core components of a collaborative POSC response, infant health and safety, caregiver needs, multidisciplinary collaboration, and data collection, in alignment with the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) and the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA).

Registration is free. Submit your questions for the presenter when you register: https://cffutures-net.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_uzaa1MOXSROq-dM0l-4YeA

08/13/2026

Strong families start with empowered parents.

Parents bring resilience and leadership to their recovery journey and family treatment courts are built to create the conditions where that leadership can emerge. Collaborative, family-centered, trauma-informed services give parents space to use their voice and strengthen their path toward recovery.

Many teams want to center parents more effectively but aren't sure where to start. Our team can help, we have tools to help collaborative teams look at strengths, protective factors, and recovery capital, so jurisdictions can see what they're already doing well and where they can grow.

Struggling to effectively center parents in your FTC? Work with us to build practices that support strong parent leaders and stronger families.

👉 Learn more: https://www.cffutures.org/ftc-landing/

08/12/2026

Strengthening Plans of Safe Care Starts with Self‑Assessment

The Plan of Safe Care Implementation Self‑Assessment Tool helps jurisdictions take stock of how they support infants and families affected by prenatal substance exposure—while aligning with CAPTA and CARA requirements.

✅ Assess current practices
✅ Explore key areas like infant safety, caregiver needs, collaboration, and data
✅ Identify strengths, gaps, and opportunities for improvement

👉 Download the Self-Assessment Tool and start identifying where your jurisdiction's Plan of Safe Care can grow stronger. https://ncsacw.acf.gov/topics/capta-plans-of-safe-care/posc-implementation-tool/

08/11/2026

What if you could see what's really driving your collaborative, before the friction shows up?

The Collaborative Values Inventory (CVI) is a tool CFF's Research and Evaluation Team uses to surface what's actually motivating the people, teams, and systems inside a collaborative, not what the mission statement says should be motivating them.
- Identifies where values align across partners, and where they don't
- Turns something usually invisible (priorities, unspoken assumptions) into something a collaborative can actually see and work with

Curious what the CVI actually measures? Schedule a call with us: https://www.cffutures.org/ret-landing/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=field-education&utm_content=ret-cvimechanismaug2026

08/10/2026

What's stopping your state from claiming a prevention service you already believe in?
Usually not evidence but infrastructure. The claiming systems and data pipelines that turn a pilot into something billable under Title IV-E.

A new federal grant funds that build-out and applications close August 17. START enters already rated "Supported" by the Clearinghouse, with real outcomes behind it: $2.22 saved for every dollar spent.

It's also a direct match for ACF's A Home for Every Child ratio - fewer children entering foster care moves a state toward 1:1 without adding a single foster home.

Children and Family Futures supports states implementing START. If your state's looking at this, let's talk before the deadline -> https://www.cffutures.org/start-contact-us/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=acc-grant-2026&utm_content=start-accgrant2aug2026

NOFO: https://simpler.grants.gov/opportunity/ea2df025-71cb-442b-918b-865abb30560b

Address

3200 El Camino Real, Unit 170
Irvine, CA
92602

Telephone

+17145053525

Website

http://www.cffutures.org/

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