Family Connections Inc

Our goal is for all families to have the opportunity to work and/or attend school to gain the skills and experiences to support their family. We believe all children deserve the opportunity to be in a caring, high-quality early care and education program to reach their full potential. We train, mentor, and coach early care and education professionals so they can offer high quality programs to the children they serve.

We offer free custom referrals and consumer education materials to all families searching for early care and education regardless of income. We offer financial assistance for early care and education to qualifying families based on income and family size. We offer training, mentoring, coaching, and financial incentives to early care and education professionals to continually improve their ability to provide a healthy, safe, and enriching environment for children. We offer resources and information to families in our community to support their children's development and school readiness. We offer basic resources to low income families such as diapers, formula, children's clothing, car seats, strollers, books, etc.

We are funded through many grants including the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services Early Childhood Services Bureau, The United Way of Cascade County, North Western Energy; and individual donations. Our staff and board are a highly educated group of passionate professionals committed to our mission of serving children and families for the benefit of our community. We are continually seeking innovative ideas for meeting the diverse needs of those we serve.

We helped over 1500 families in 2016 with financial assistance so they could work or attend school to support their family; and their children could be in a healthy, safe, enriching environment. We helped over 2000 families find and choose a quality early care and education program for their children. We offered over 1500 hours of professional development courses and coaching to child care providers to increase the quality of their programs. We helped 38 new providers with assistance to start a successful quality program. Our Ready Families Ready Learners program offered our second annual Free Preschool Expo to families with resources to help prepare preschool children for kindergarten. We are continually seeking innovative ideas to serve our community and partnering with other organizations. We are part of a collective impact model with nine other nonprofits to help families on the path to prosperity to transition to self sufficiency. We partner with Child Care Aware of America and the US Air Force to offer respite care to military families with a child with special needs. We offer Adverse Childhood Experiences trauma and resiliency building training to programs working with vulnerable children and families. We provide child care assistance to over 200 children in foster care with child protective services. We started an new Ready Resources program to provide essentials like diapers and formula to low income families. We are working with our early childhood coalition to offer resource kits to families in our homeless shelter to boost brain development in young children. We are continually seeking new funding to expand our services.