GOLD2022

Children's Trust, Inc.

aka Children's Trust, Inc.   |   Boston, MA   |  www.childrenstrustma.org

Mission

The Children’s Trust is on a mission to stop child abuse in Massachusetts. Our programs partner with parents to help them build the skills and confidence they need to make sure kids have safe and healthy childhoods. Our on-the-ground work is accomplished through a network of over one hundred of the state’s most innovative local community organizations, providing high-quality services to help families thrive and keep children safe. When children grow up safe and healthy in strong families, it changes the course of their lives.

Ruling year info

1992

Executive Director

Jennifer Valenzuela

Main address

55 Court Street, 4th Floor

Boston, MA 02108 USA

Show more contact info

Formerly known as

Friends of Children's Trust Fund, Inc.

EIN

04-3123184

NTEE code info

Family Services (P40)

Parent Teacher Group (B94)

dren's Rights (Rhi)

IRS filing requirement

This organization is required to file an IRS Form 990 or 990-EZ.

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Communication

Programs and results

What we aim to solve

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

Each year, about 135,000 children are reported as abused or neglected in Massachusetts. While we spend over $1 billion in state funds each year, our service systems are overwhelmed; less than 1/3 of reported maltreatment cases receive new support or services. And at the same time, there are many more families with similar challenges that go unreported. Research clearly shows that when adverse childhood experiences occur – such as ongoing neglect by parents; physical, sexual, or emotional abuse; and/or an adult caregiver with substance abuse or mental health challenges – they have a devastating impact on a child's emotional and physical well-being for their entire lifetime. Preventing families from reaching crisis mode and strengthening family functioning is the solution to stop abuse and stem the tide of children needing protection.

Our programs

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?

Fatherhood Initiative

The Fatherhood Initiative supports fathers, their families, and the professionals who work with them via two main components: the Fathers and Family Network and the Nurturing Fathers Program. The Fathers and Family Network is a networking and training group for professionals who work with fathers and provides support and training opportunities to practitioners to enhance their skills, learn new strategies for engaging fathers, and coordinate services across the state. The Nurturing Fathers Program is a 13-week strength-based parenting group that helps fathers build and strengthen positive parenting attitudes and behaviors. Topics include self-nurturing, fathering without violence, positive discipline, and co-parenting teamwork skills.

Population(s) Served
Families
Parents
Young adults
Infants and toddlers
Children

Healthy Families Massachusetts is a home-based family support and coaching program that supports young, first-time parents and helps them to create stable and nurturing environments for their children. The program matches parents with trained professionals who visit families’ homes to provide support and guidance during pregnancy and the first three years of life. Home visitors teach parents about proper baby care, promote nurturing and attachment, practice effective parenting skills, and ensure parents have a solid understanding of healthy child development. They also counsel parents on achieving personal goals such as going back to school or securing a job.

Population(s) Served
Families
Adolescent parents
Single parents
Infants and toddlers
Pregnant people

Family Centers are where parents and children go to meet other families, tap into community resources, learn new parenting skills, and participate in activities and support programs. Centers are open to all families with young children within the community and provide an accessible and welcoming environment. Centers partner with parents and kids to help them navigate and strengthen family relationships so that the whole family thrives. Our six Family Centers serve over 12,000 parents, caregivers, and children in over 30 communities.

Population(s) Served

From educating and empowering children and parents to informing and engaging the legislature, community leaders, and all youth-serving organizations, the Children’s Trust works to protect children from sexual abuse through several initiatives. This includes legislative work as a co-chair of the Massachusetts Legislative Task Force on the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse, in addition to offering a number of prevention-based trainings and comprehensive resources for youth-serving organizations and parents.

Population(s) Served
Victims of crime and abuse

SAFE Child Communities is an initiative that aims to strengthen families by building essential community connections that can prevent childhood trauma. The initiative rests on a framework based on extensive research and is supplemented by adherence to quality standards and accreditation processes for core services including Family Centers and Home Visiting.

Population(s) Served
Families
Parents
Children and youth
Caregivers
Families
Parents
Children and youth
Caregivers
Families
Parents
Children and youth
Caregivers

Where we work

Our Sustainable Development Goals

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.

Goals & Strategy

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.

Charting impact

Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.

The Children’s Trust is on a mission to stop child abuse in Massachusetts. Our programs partner with parents to help them build the lifelong skills and self-confidence they need to ensure children grow up safe and healthy.

Driven by an evidence-based approach, the Children’s Trust develops and supports programs that help parents build and sustain healthy families in Massachusetts.

We are the only statewide child abuse prevention organization with a network of over one hundred of the most innovative local community organizations. We invest in high-quality programs informed by rigorous research in order to improve outcomes for children and families.

The Children’s Trust develops, evaluates, and promotes parenting education and coaching programs to improve the lives of children. We also create and influence public policies, improve family service systems, and strengthen communities. We are a private-public organization. This means that additional funds raised by the Friends of the Children's Trust have a greater impact on accomplishing our mission. Much of our administrative costs are paid for with funding from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We leverage that money with federal funding and private donations.

In the 2014 fiscal year, this resulted in 88.5 percent of our total budget going directly into services that benefit families and children. Our work focuses on building Protective Factors that support the overall well-being of children and their families. Developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, the Protective Factors framework is a research-driven approach that identifies key conditions that must be in place to support the optimal well-being of children and families.

All of our programs work to help parents build and strengthen these factors. Protective Factors serve as buffers that help families cope, achieve, and thrive, even during times of stress. They are the cornerstones upon which to build healthy environments for children and families. The Protective Factors are: Parental resilience - developing the ability to cope and bounce back from life’s challenges; knowledge of parenting and child development - receiving accurate information about raising young children, and learning appropriate and effective strategies to gauge expectations and set limits on child behaviors; Social connections - engaging friends, family members, neighbors, and others in the community who may provide emotional support and assistance; Concrete support in times of need - accessing life essentials such as food, clothing, and housing when there is an immediate need; Social and emotional development of children - fostering a child’s ability to interact positively with others and communicate his or her emotions appropriately.

Through over twenty-five years of practice and valuation, we’ve learned how to partner effectively with parents to help them get the skills, tools, and confidence they need to be the best parents they can be. The Children’s Trust does this through deep, long-lasting partnerships with over one hundred of the most effective family support agencies across Massachusetts. We work hand-in-hand with our partners to provide high-quality services that help children and families thrive through: research, including program review and evaluation; sharing proven best-practices; training; and advocacy for family support services statewide. Our programs include: Healthy Families Massachusetts - a home-based family support and coaching program that works with young, first-time parents and helps them create safe, stimulating environments for their children; Massachusetts Family Centers - centers where parents and children go to meet other families, tap into community resources, learn new  parenting skills, and participate in activities and support programs; Parenting Education and Support Programs - group-based programs that help parents enhance the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to be the best parents they can be; The Fatherhood Initiative - a program that works to advance activities and trainings that support fathers, their families, and the professionals who work with them; One Tough Job - our award-winning parenting website,  onetoughjob.org, gives parents immediate access to current, reliable, and practical information about parenting and child development; Family Support Training Center - a robust offering of a variety of learning opportunities to help family support professionals across Massachusetts stay on the cutting edge of the field

The Children’s Trust has been the Commonwealth’s catalyst for building strong families and preventing child abuse and neglect for over 25 years. We set the state’s highest standards for family support. We ensure our programs create nurturing and supportive families and communities where children can thrive through rigorous research. Some examples of our recent accomplishments include the following: Research by Tufts University showed a high rate of depression among young mothers in Healthy Families Massachusetts. We responded by introducing “Moving Beyond Depression,” a proven treatment and component of our home-based family support and coaching program. The Tufts evaluation has also shown: (1) Children in Healthy Families Massachusetts, on average, were developmentally on-target despite national research that shows children of teen parents are at greater risk for developmental delays. (2) Mothers in Healthy Families Massachusetts showed more positive effects that are important for young parents - reducing impulsive, antisocial, or risky behaviors - than mothers not receiving services. (3) Mothers in the program reported less parenting stress. Increased stress is a risk factor for abuse and neglect. (4) Also, the evaluation showed young mothers in Healthy Families Massachusetts are doing better in school. They’re more likely to re-enroll in high school and get their diplomas. In fact, two years after enrollment in the program, these mothers were nearly twice more likely to have completed one year of college than mothers not in the program. (5) Better education can result in better jobs and less poverty among these families. When parents are less stressed about money, they can create nurturing and loving environments where their children grow up healthy and ready to succeed. Among our Massachusetts Family Centers, surveys have shown that nearly all parents said the program helped them cope better with parenting challenges. In our Parenting Education and Support Programs, nearly all parents indicated they learned new parenting skills and about new resources in their communities to benefit their families. For more information about the Children’s Trust’s many accomplishments and programs, please see our annual report and visit childrenstrustma.org.

How we listen

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.

done We shared information about our current feedback practices.
  • How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?

    To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve

  • Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?

  • What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?

Financials

Children's Trust, Inc.
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Operations

The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.

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Connect with nonprofit leaders

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  • Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
  • Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
  • Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations

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Children's Trust, Inc.

Board of directors
as of 12/16/2022
SOURCE: Self-reported by organization
Board chair

Mr. George Atanasov

Johnson & Johnson

Term: 2017 -

Roger Donoghue

Murphy Donoghue Partners

Edward Bailey

Medical Director, North Shore Children's Hospital

Sidney Boorstein

No Affiliation

Betsy Busch

Tufts University School of Medicine

Claudine Donikian

Pentera, Inc.

Richard Lord

Associate Industries of Massachusetts

Samuel Mullin

Robinson & Cole

Anne Berman

Chadwick Martin Bailey

Hector Lopez-Camacho

State Street Corporation

Peg Sprague

Retired

David Sullivan

Northwestern DA's Office

Jane Tewksbury

Brazelton Touchpoints Center

Robert Sege

The Medical Foundation, and Health Resources in Action, Inc.

Richard Bendetson

Diversified Funding Inc.

David Breazzano

DDJ Capital Management, LLC

Richard Feilteau

Gray, Gray & Gray LLP

Jeff Grosser

Rodman Insurance Agency, Inc.

Lisa McElaney

JF & CS

Maria Mossaides

Child Advocate, MA Office of the Child Advocate

Linda Spears

MA Department of Children & Families

Marylou Sudders

MA Executive Office of Health and Human Services

Thomas Tinlin

Howard Stein Hudson

Kerry Maguire

ForsythKids, The Forsyth Institute

Amy Kershaw

Commissioner, Massachusetts Dept. of Transitional Assistance

Anna Lucey Neely

Principal, A. Lucey Strategies, LLC

Anne Punzak Marcus

Co-Founder/CEO, Exceptional Lives

Brooke Doyle

Commissioner, Massachusetts Dept. of Mental Health

Eileen Connors

Eric Solfisburg

Head of Investment Product Consulting, MassMutual

Jay Weiner, PhD

Vice President of Advanced Analytics, Chadwick Martin Bailey, Inc.

Jeff Riley

Commissioner, Massachusetts Dept. of Elementary & Secondary Education

Kate Haranis

Head of Corporate Public Relations, Boston Scientific Corporation

Michael Kennealy

Secretary, Executive Office of Housing & Economic Development

Paul Guzzi

Susan Loconto Penta

Managing Partner, MIDIOR Consulting

Tara Esfahanian

Director of Major Gifts, Northeastern University

Tim Wilkerson

President, New England Cable & Telecommunications Association, Inc.

Board leadership practices

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.

  • Board orientation and education
    Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? No
  • CEO oversight
    Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? No
  • Ethics and transparency
    Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? No
  • Board composition
    Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? No
  • Board performance
    Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? No

Organizational demographics

SOURCE: Self-reported; last updated 12/16/2022

Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.

Leadership

The organization's leader identifies as:

Race & ethnicity
Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx
Gender identity
Female, Not transgender (cisgender)
Sexual orientation
Heterosexual or straight
Disability status
Person without a disability

Race & ethnicity

No data

Gender identity

No data

 

No data

Sexual orientation

No data

Disability

No data