Family Treatment Courts
Your team shares the mission. We help turn that commitment into progress.
We help you turn shared goals into shared practice, show outcomes you can stand behind, and build a structure the whole team carries.
50
States, plus D.C. and Guam
10,000+
Professionals trained
95%
Participant satisfaction
19
Years of FTC technical assistance
The Challenge
What makes this work hard
Family treatment courts are strongest when child welfare agencies, treatment providers, and the court work as one team with families at the center. Keeping that partnership aligned takes deliberate work, especially when three pressures are pulling it apart.
Shared goals, separate workflows
Child welfare agencies, treatment providers, and courts may share goals while operating in parallel, and sometimes as adversaries. Coordinators cannot direct agencies they do not lead, and judges cannot write the partners’ workflows for them.
Performance is hard to prove
Funders, agency leaders, and legislators want credible outcome data. When referrals live in spreadsheets not designed for outcome reporting, teams cannot easily show what is working or where change is needed. Reporting becomes a liability instead of a tool.
Too much of the work sits with too few people
Coordinators may inherit an FTC with little documentation or have to build its practices from scratch. Judges carry responsibility for outcomes shaped across agencies. Without a shared structure, the people leading the work are left to reconstruct the model themselves.
from pause to progress
Too many unsuccessful exits made one thing clear: the approach had to change.
70%
of parents who left one Midwestern FTC in a single year did so through expulsion or administrative discharge
Those exits were linked to lower reunification rates, longer stays in foster care, and less access to treatment and recovery support. With CFF’s guidance, the team paused new referrals and reassessed its approach.
CFF brought the FTC’s partners together to review the data, examine its operations, and create an action plan. The team redesigned its phases to emphasize re-engagement, individualized responses, and sustained recovery.
Referrals resumed with renewed clarity. The FTC strengthened its practices and partner cohesion, and its use of data to guide change earned national recognition through the Peer Learning Court Program.
Proof
What FTC leaders say about working with CFF
“As a state agency responsible for supporting all treatment courts with technical assistance and training, Children and Family Futures supports our efforts by producing high-quality training and technical assistance tools that we can share with our state’s operational and planning recovery courts.”
Dr. Kirstin FrescolnNorth Carolina Judicial Branch
How It Works
What happens after you reach out
We begin with your community or state’s current work, then shape the technical assistance around your team’s strengths, challenges, and priorities.
Start with your work
We begin with a conversation about your community or state and what your team wants to strengthen.
Identify strengths and challenges
During the first month, we examine strengths, challenges, opportunities, and threats together. We also review available outcome data, system structure, and team dynamics.
Shape the engagement
We shape the engagement around your priorities and identify the right mix of assessment, facilitation, coaching, and training.
Begin the work
Once the scope is set and contracting is complete, the technical assistance begins.
Common Questions
What FTC teams ask before reaching out
Next Step
Start with where your FTC stands.
Whether you are launching, restructuring, or scaling across counties, tell us what your team is working toward. We will help you identify the right next step.
