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If you work with families, fathers, mothers, and children to connect with colleagues and enhance your practice—all while advocating for the profession and critical social issues, FFCA is the place for you! FFCA members enjoy the benefits and networking provided by the FFCA national office, FFCA Regional Affiliate Leads, and their local/state Affiliates for one annual fee.
FFCA members represent the very best of fatherhood and family practitioners from diverse professions, such as Head Start, where FFCA formed our roots with others in fatherhood practitioners, child welfare, early childhood, marriage, and family therapists, social work, criminal justice, psychologists, educators counselors, life coaches practice and others who enhance their skills through ongoing professional education at FFCA's national Conference, regional symposiums, webinar training and with international affiliates' conferences.
Working with fathers is complex work, and client resources can be limited. When members unite by joining FFCA, we all benefit with a more prominent voice and more influence with those providing professional resources, policymakers, and local leaders to make mindful decisions to improve outcomes for children ultimately!
Grow With Us as a pivotal contributor to advocacy and decision-making at FFCA as our affiliate leaders. Leaders of FFCA go beyond a headquartered entity with the Affiliated Agencies throughout the United States and currently in Australia, Africa, China, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Bermuda with aspirations of connecting passionate leaders in all our states, regions, and international growth. All FFCA Affiliates' benefits are provided to all their staff as part of the reciprocal commitment to change and impact.
Organizational Membership Form
Below is the history of this organization in part, but it is all based on collaboration. We have supported countless initiatives and millions of new funding with peers over the decades, but it is based on trust, cooperation, and how we can help children have the best. One example, in 2022, the partnership allowed one of the FFCA affiliates with our team to submit a grant to the State of California to engage fathers. We introduced this grant as Co-Project Directors, and the Raise Foundation was awarded $525,000.00 with FFCA. If you have questions about joining FFCA as a Member or Affiliate, please call or email us anytime.
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James C. Rodríguez,
Chief Executive Officer & President
Fathers & Families Coalition of America
424-225-1323 [direct line]
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Background of Fathers and Families Coalition of America
The Fathers and Families Coalition of America started from a group of leaders in Arizona. We ran under the auspicious of Pinal Gila Community Child Services until formal incorporation as Arizona Fathers and Families Coalition, Inc. (AFFC). The coalition formed Head Start, Early Head Start, Child Welfare, Maternal Child and Adolescent, Workforce Development, Institutions of Higher Education, Native American, African American, and Hispanic serving agencies. In addition, local and state associations such as Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, Parents Anonymous, National Council of La Raza, Urban League, Big Brothers Big Sisters, 100 Black Men, and government agencies from the Department of Corrections, local law enforcement, with Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities, and other committed community-based organizations from 1995 to 2003 created this coalition.
This diverse coalition fostered the development of ten multi-million-dollar grant funding through the State of Arizona Department of Economic Security. AZDES funded Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Basic Education Life Skills TANF statewide grant, one of the nation's first services for fathers with the Young Fathers TANF statewide grant, and an added statewide TANF Character Education program for children third grade to eighth grade. In addition, the plan included connecting parents and low-income individuals to employment and education opportunities from unique JOBS accessibility programs funded by TANF. The achievements of this group of diverse professionals under the guidance of AFFC aided well over ten thousand individuals. The impacts were tremendous, helping parents and individuals move out of poverty to better family life from border communities, inner-city, rural, or public housing. The purpose off included developing opportunities based on collaboration. Other programs included establishing the Heads-Up program with the National Head Start Association (2000) to teach early childhood educators a fantastic family literacy program. AFFC secured through Mesa Community College as the State Family Development Credential Director (2001) for Cornell University.
The exclusive leadership of these community-based education programs paralleled the Family Preservation Credential Course (1994), developed to support parents and family service workers start the trajectory of social work. We proved the dynamic collaboration with Arizona State University and Central Arizona College by J. Rodríguez at Pinal Gila Community Child Services. The program led to the training of staff and parents throughout Head Start and Early Intervention programs in Arizona. In 1999, the observations for other professional development led to the Annual Families and Fathers Conference. The attendees received thirteen college credits in sociology and an agreement to matriculate for the School of Social Work undergraduate program at Arizona State University. In 2004, a shift from grassroots to an incorporated Arizona nonprofit continued our purpose of striving for excellence in services to support children, families, and communities. The joint new funding investments amassed over five million dollars for grants annually from 1996 to 2007. Taking passion, purpose, collaboration, and commitment became the Fathers and Families Coalition pillars.
Expanding Partnerships and Services
It started as a vision that led to an enthusiastic and grassroots approach to improving services for children, mothers, and fathers to the formalization of now Fathers and Families Coalition of America. Over a decade of collaboration efforts in Arizona and national partnerships in 2011 manifested a call from colleagues to move AFFC to professional development and advocacy. FFCA established formal partnership agreements with affiliates with over fifty agencies in the United States. Eventually, the growth of consistent partnerships led to international affiliates in the United Kingdom, Africa, South America, Australia, China, the Caribbean, and two from Puerto Rico that included la Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico and the formalization incorporation in Puerto Rico with Transforming Leadership & Management Institute. The annual Conference is now planning for our twenty-fourth meeting with international faculty and attendance. April 24-27, 2023.
Transforming Leadership & Management Institute (TLMI) and Center for Latino Initiatives of Fathers and Families Coalition of America is part of the Fathers and Families Coalition of America (FFCA). FFCA started to bring people together to support initiatives to improve outcomes for children, enhance parent relationships, and support the desires of others to have a better life. Collaborations led to TLMI being the only organization certified in Puerto Rico to offer the programs. We have worked with our then affiliate of FFCA, Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico, to supply comprehensive services and training programs for more than 1200 individuals. The foundation of TLMI in 2020 with FFCA, an existing 501C3 international nonprofit with offices in California and Arizona, finished the formal expansion with incorporation in San Juan, Puerto Rico (register number 453499, is a Domestic Corporation Non-Profit) organized under the laws of Puerto Rico in October 2020. The joint expertise of TLMI and FFCA in the past 18 months introduced three specialty training programs. The Advanced Practitioner Credential Course and the OAR Leadership Institute use a hybrid platform onsite in Ható Rey (October 2020 and September 2021) and Ponce (February 2021) due to COVID-19. The customized opportunities through live practice-specific credential and leadership courses with continuing education and other professional development activities for more than two hundred individuals from Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Jamaica, United Kingdom, Australia, Pakistan, and representation from twenty states in the United States.
FFCA's professional development standards and competencies for effective professional, leadership, and parent education engagement. In keeping with the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), the Fathers and Families Coalition of America (FFCA), too, models its academic excellence by setting up thresholds for professional competence through an integrated curriculum design of all our programs with over twenty-thousand individuals trained since the concept of helping low-income parents and entry family service workers. The competence is holistic, involving performance and the knowledge, values, critical thinking, affective reactions, and judgment that inform performance.
FFCA is one of the leading entities for professional development, parenting education, and policy, focusing on the impacts of fathers on child outcomes from one essential factor, collaboration. FFCA is the National Association of Social Workers approved continuing education provider. We offer added benefits for participants in the Advanced Practitioners Credential (APC), OAR Leadership Institute, DiSC Certification, and other specialty curriculum and credential programs such as the Nurturing Fathers Program.
Collaboration the Key to Success
The sustainability of FFCA is rooted in collaboration. Over the past decade, we have exceeded the organization's ability. However, affiliates and other stakeholders' support exceed efforts to meet the needs of diverse professionals. Partnerships fostered the bridging of technology into services. The experiences led to collaborations to create relationships with Larry Blair, a high-tech pioneer, including networking architecture (Ethernet Switching) and high-speed internet (IP Switching and Subscriber Management). Scott Beck, the founder of Tango CEO, Vice Chairman & Partner at Pacific Dental Services, and founder of Ancestry and other technology companies, supported our initial efforts to infuse hybrid aspects of direct services, regional events, and our National Conference.
In 2020, seamless use of technology from virtual fireside chats on education, health, mental health, and wellness and the development of the Women2Women Café with the Men2Men Café for over four thousand participants. The direct support from Annie E. Casey Foundation allowed our purpose of supplying needed professional development, skills, models, and other essential outcomes for over one thousand professionals from over ten nations in the past two years. We collaborated with the Best Start 0-6 Community Grant through El Nido Family Service, Inc., and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) funding to develop the OAR Leadership Institute. Essential to the grant, train over sixty parents in a five-month program cycle and slightly over ninety-eight percent retention.
FFCA fosters a community of professionals for sustained relationships to support mutual causes, all centering on improving the lives of children. During the global crisis, without collaboration partnerships, we could not have achieved significant impacts from the 2021 annual conference with attendees from over forty states and five nations, with the 2022 conference increased. Our primary purpose for FFCA is four-fold. One to give stakeholders the best professional development with continuous quality improvement strategies that transfer to improving outcomes for children and families. Second, through a series of virtual sessions, we create platforms to edify social equity from how policy impacts community-based practices. Third, FFCA trains current and aspiring leaders and practitioners through our advanced curriculums to support a deeper level of professional growth (sample manual enclosed) aside from our national/international Conference that simultaneously leads to our final pillar.
When FFCA committed to a virtual platform, Whova, the power of engaging parents and professionals with 2264 total hours of viewing from the seventy-two sessions at the 2021 conference, the sessions focusing on disparities in health, education, foster care, social justice, followed by roundtable series, were the top-rated and viewed sessions. In 2022 we exceeded the 2021 participation with almost six hundred attendees, primarily in the virtual community. What is next for FFCA are tremendous opportunities to include a collaboration grant using our leadership model to engage fathers.