The Family Support program at Family & Children’s Agency provides guidance and support for families involved with the Department of Children & Families as well as those facing custody, visitation, or divorce issues. This program works to promote the safety and emotional stability for all family members involved. Our social workers are trained to promote the safety and well-being of families by building and strengthening familial relationships and connecting families to community resources.
Bilingual staff support is available in all areas of service.
Parent Education Program (PEP)
The Parent Education Program (PEP) is a 6-hour mandatory group class required by the State of Connecticut for parents with children 18 or younger who are going through custody, visitation, and/or divorce issues. The class is designed to educate parents about the many issues children face when their family situation changes. The program educates participants about how they can help their children successfully adjust to divorce or living apart from a parent. The program includes information about children’s developmental stages, helping children adjust to parental separation, cooperative parenting, conflict management and dispute resolution techniques, guidelines for visitation, and mitigating the impact of stress on children.
For more information about PEP or to register, please contact Pam Ulrich at PUlrich@fcagency.org or 203-523-5737.
Focus on KIDS (Knowledge, Insight, Decisions, Solutions)
Focus on KIDS is a program that provides direction and support by working with parents experiencing high conflict separations and/or divorces. Focus on KIDS (FOK) gives parents the knowledge and the insight to enable them to make good decisions leading to solutions in the best interest of their children. The primary goal of FOK is to teach separating, divorcing, or divorced parents what they need to do in order to give their children the care they need. By working together with the co-parents in a personalized setting, this program gives parents the opportunity to learn skills they can apply to reduce conflict, improve communication, and utilize problem-solving skills to ultimately benefit their children and establish a healthy co-parenting relationship.
Parenting with DCF Involvement
By closely working with the Department of Children & Families, FCA's Family Support programs offer services through assessment, strength- and home-based visitation and support, parenting education, parenting skills, budgeting, job skills, case coordination, and access to community resources.
Intensive Family Preservation (IFP)
The Intensive Family Preservation Program (IFP) is an in-home program designed to guide eligible families to adopting safe and effective coping skills and parenting methods so children who have been exposed to some level of child abuse or neglect can safely remain in their homes and avoid placement into foster care. The program provides home-based case management, crisis-intervention, parenting education, advocacy, coordination with community service providers, and assistance with concrete needs. The program is strength-based, assists parents in improving parent-child relationships, and helps families attain stability.
Reunification and Therapeutic Family Time (RTFT)
Reunification and Therapeutic Family Time provides clinical support for families whose child(ren) are removed from their homes by DCF and whose goal is reunification. By offering three methods of support, Families are placed in the RTFT component best suited to their needs. Robust assessments are offered to determine if reunification is appropriate for a particular family and to formulate next steps. Reunification is a 4-6 month staged program to transition families from supervised visitation to reunification and post-reunification support. RTFT also offers parent coaching to promote attachment and help parents to positively engage with their children during visits offered in-home and in the community. RTFT social workers utilize a strength-based approach and help identify and address family needs by providing case management and connecting families to community resources.
Caregiver Support Team (CST)
The Caregiver Support Team (CST) is an intensive in-home program specifically designed for children being placed into relative, kinship, foster, and pre-adoptive homes licensed by DCF. FCA's Caregiver Support Teams provide early intervention and guidance to caregivers, their families, and the children placed with them. Services are focused on working collaboratively to secure community resources, identify existing support networks, and build upon the family’s strengths to address their vulnerabilities. The goal is to prevent the disruption of placements and increase stability and permanency by providing timely in-home interventions with the child(ren) and family.
IFP, RTFT, and CST services are by DCF referral only
Supportive Housing for Families®
The Supportive Housing for Families (SHF)® program, in partnership with The Connection Inc., provides families working with the Department of Children & Families (DCF) throughout the state with support services and access to safe, quality, affordable housing.
Supportive Housing for Families
® serves all of Connecticut. FCA works with families for whom housing is a barrier to maintaining custody of or reunifying with their children. By working to secure safe and affordable housing, families can begin the path to self-sufficiency. Once housed, FCA provides intensive case management to ensure families are able to maintain their housing and provide a secure living situation for their family.