A Message From the Treasurer...

To Our Valued Members, Partners and Community Members,

The past year has been one of both advancement and retreat. As you read in the opening, as well as in our annual report from 2022, we made many strides in advancing our strategic positioning, restructuring our organization, and advancing our work.

This year was one of agile adaption to budgetary constraints. We went into the fiscal year with a very detailed budget showing what we needed to continue all the projects and efforts that we started the prior year, but did not manage to convince DCF to expand our budget to continue to do the scale and scope of work projected. So we contracted our work, primarily by reducing from monthly to quarterly meetings, and starting no new projects. While this was not without some remorse, we rallied through the year, accomplished several ongoing and staged projects, and found where we needed to meet more often and where the reduced number of meetings worked. I am very proud of the hard work put in by all the Family Advisory Committee members and their willingness to stick to tough frameworks when needed.

We are optimistically projecting a budget for the upcoming year that will allow for us to reinvigorate our committees and project work through increased frequency of meeting and engagement, for while we “made it work” in FY 23, we look back and see the impact of decreasing our meeting frequency and the negative consequences it held for our service delivery and support of families. Our Leadership Team has been instrumental in reviewing and informing our optimum operational structure and together we are looking for new partners and resources to help us in this vital work.

Jennifer Rambridge