Children's Trust, Inc.
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
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
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.
Healthy Families Massachusetts
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.
Massachusetts Family Centers
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.
Child Sexual Abuse Prevention
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.
SAFE Child
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.
Where we work
External reviews

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Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
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.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
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.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
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
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
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
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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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
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Children's Trust, Inc.
Board of directorsas of 12/16/2022
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
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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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
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
No data
Gender identity
No data
No data
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data