Empowering Families for a Resilient Future

With the support of our community, Friends of the Children – Utah is enhancing our services to focus on family stability, safety, and preventing child welfare system involvement. Our approach includes a comprehensive Family Needs & Progress Assessments for each family, regular Caregiver Feedback Surveys, and a pilot program utilizing the trauma-informed Strengthening Families Coping Resources (SFCR) curriculum to equip caregivers with positive parenting, coping, and communication skills.

This new 10-week program, led by our Program Director, Kami Neves, provides families facing significant risk factors with a weekly family dinner and interactive activities focused on reducing trauma symptoms and building crucial skills in stress co-regulation, stability, safety, and resource access.

One of the families in this SFCR cohort entered homelessness during the holidays. A single mother and her son had been staying on friends’ couches for several months. This family received extensive support from one of our professional mentors, Will, and our Family Engagement Coordinator, Maddy. Despite the immense stress, the mother, initially reluctant to enter a shelter, agreed to take her son to the shelter. Today she is receiving housing case management and expressing renewed hope. Remarkably, this family graduated from SFCR and shared that focusing on maintaining the routines and positive coping strategies they learned in the program have been helpful, even amidst their challenging circumstances in the shelter. We're incredibly encouraged by this family's resilience.

They were just one of our first cohort of families who completed the program earlier this year. We held a heartwarming graduation ceremony where families created a “Spirituality Word Flower” that symbolized their sources of strength. Each youth and caregiver wrote what helps them keep going during challenging times on a flower petal and added it to the group’s flower. Words like “faith, hope, love, family, connection, being in nature, and serving others” filled the beautiful, colorful flower! At the conclusion of the ceremony, all the families received certificates and gifts to reinforce and express gratitude for their participation in the program. The families know that the program is just one way that Friends – Utah supports them and their child.

We are deeply inspired and proud of the positive changes and resilience demonstrated by the youth and families we serve and are excited to be launching our next SFCR cohort this spring!