coming soon!


coming soon!

 

Department of Children and Families (DCF)

Permanency Planning

CFFC has held a contract for consulation and permanency planning with DCF for 21 years. If you are a DCF worker making a referral within this contract, you can request a brochure from Renee Zalesky (Renee.Zalesky@state.ma.us) , our contract manager.

The assigned clinician or clinicians will set up an appointment time for you at our office (if you refer 3+ cases at one time, arrangements can be made to have CFFC clinicians visit the DCF office) to review the case with you. This meeting may include the client(s) for whom you requested the consultation. If several meetings are necessary to accomplish the goals of the referral as determined by CFFC staff, your clinician or clinicians will request assistance from you to set up meetings with the family and/or collaterals. When the case is completed, a short form will be sent to you and the DCF central office. This form will note appropriate times, dates, and recommendations. If the case is a full-scale assessment, a copy of the assessment will be sent to you and the DCF central office. This assessment will include recommendations and a detailed account of the work that has been done.

"Department staff seeking much needed direction on case planning, and families struggling with complex family issues have benefited greatly from the Center's expertise." - Mary Whitehead Santos, Former Contract Manager

Danny (age 5) has a history that is long and complex. He was removed from his birthmother's care at 9 months. He and his 4 siblings were in foster homes for 4 years and are now in pre-adoptive families. Currently PACT is working with Danny's new pre-adoptive family to help them understand his history, his need to remain connected with his siblings and the importance of understanding why Danny's adjustment will be complicated and challenging. The key to permanent placement is psycho-education and careful planning in the best interest of the children.

Family Networks

CFFC has also been approved as a provider of Family Network services by DCF. Under this contract, CFFC can provide a variety of Community-Based Support and Clinical services to families with challenges. These include:

- Project Prepare
- Foster Family Therapy
- Attachment Enhancement
- Clinical Mediation
- Transition & Reunification Program
- Clinical & Rehabilitative Services
- Keeping Kinnections
- Groups
- The Kinship Program
- Concurrent Planning (including specialized services for parents/caregivers and birthparents, and Entrustment Ceremonies)

For more information on any of these programs, please ask at CFFC, call us at 617-547-0909 or email us at cffc@kinnect.org.


Specialized Post Adoption Services

Center For Family Connections was one of the first centers in the country to offer post adoption services, over thirty years ago -- when most people did not think that there were services needed after adoption. We have been developing models for treatment and models for training for the past thirty years.

Challenges do continue after adoption.

Comprehensive Services are provided through CFFC for families and children in the Commonwealth. Some of these services are:

-Ongoing support and education for birth families in order to improve contact in an open adoption and in the opening of closed adoptions.
-Ongoing support and education for adoptive families -- around issues of developmental stages, trauma history, open adoption contact, adolescent issues, along with search and reunion.
-Ongoing support, education, and programs for adopted people as children, adolescents, adults, and as parents raising the next generation.

Adoption Connections Training Institute: OneWorld Network (ACTION)

An attempt in 2003 to expand the worldwide community of adoption included a collaboration between After Adoption in the UK and CFFC in the US. Although adoption is done with different policies and procedures in every country, post-adoption issues are universal -- they cut across language, race, culture, religion, and ethnicity. It is our common ground and common community of caring about post-adoption issues that brought us together for the Best of Both Worlds international conference in February 2003 in Dublin, Ireland.

CFFC is working toward a larger neighborhood of Adoption. With other organizations/agencies joining with us, we hope to create an international dialog about post-adoption services.

Adoption Connections Training Institute: OneWorld Network (ACTION) proposes an international collaboration among many grass roots and organizations agencies. The purpose of ACTION is not to argue about what is right and wrong with the way adoptions are done (although that can be easily argued), but to work together to provide the best possible training, treatment services, and psychoeducational tools for families and children and for the professionals who work with them worldwide. It is our hope to develop a network that will exchange ideas, knowledge, models, and resources to provide the best possible services for all members of the extended Family of Adoption.

Our conference, OneWorld Neighborhood, took place February 21-23, 2005 in Dublin, Ireland. It included a large number of speakers and discussants so that we can continue a conversation about what we are doing well, what we can share, what we could do better for the families (by birth, adoption, foster, kinship, and alternative reproductive technologies), and most of all for the children in adoption.

We welcome you to this new international Neighborhood of Adoption!

Our first ACTION conference was held in Cambridge, MA in February 2007 at the Hotel Marlowe, followed two years later by another conference in February 2009, also at the Hotel Marlowe.

Please contact us for further information.
The next ACTION conference will be in February 2011; Hotel Marlowe; Cambridge, MA, USA.