The Executive Director's Message
Everything we do as humans centers around relationships. Yet these are becoming more difficult to establish and maintain amid rising use of technology and the after-effects of the Covid lockdown. In these times, we must continually learn and relearn how to build healthy relationships. It is key to strengthening, supporting, healing, and sustaining families.
Many who know me know that I am a farmer’s daughter and that I compare building healthy relationships to growing up on the farm – how well you cultivate and nurture your crops will determine the success of your harvest. On the farm we are continually evaluating sections to see where we need more water or fertilizer, and how the crops are doing in general. We shore up what is faltering and let go of what is no longer working. In a family farm, the parallels between a healthy approach to work and a healthy approach to relationships is obvious. The Farm is a natural system – and families, too, are based on the law of the harvest. You can’t take shortcuts or skip a season’s work on a farm, hoping to make it up later – if you don’t plant in the spring, you don’t harvest in the fall. Similarly, building good, healthy family relationships is about trust, consistency, cultivating, nurturing, and adapting. You always reap what you sow.
At BFFI, the family coaches value the relationships they build with the children and their families. In addition to offering many special skills, they serve as models for supporting positive, healthy relationships that will help empower families to bring out the best in themselves. BFFI uses many strength-based, trauma-informed, evidence-based best practices to help families heal. From this, we aim to harvest positive parenting techniques, child/youth well-being, and stable, happy homes. We are part of a natural system, but positive outcomes don’t automatically come naturally. We must always be cultivating, nurturing, and working together with enthusiasm and faith.
All the Best Always,
Esther A. Torrez MA, MBA
Founder and Executive Director
Partnership and Events
Breaking Barriers: A Family Permanent Placement Event
In collaboration with DCFS Pomona Regional Office and other community partners, BFFI helped to organize, plan and launch a first-ever Caregiver Appreciation event in Pomona on March 21, 2024. The event hosted 130 caregiver families – and more than 30 community-based agencies showcased the services they offer to strengthen and support caregivers. The goal was to support and appreciate the caregivers, foster parents, and resources families who help families reunite when possible and find pathways to stable, permanent foster placement in other cases.
Partnership and Events
BFFI's Key Funding Partners Improve Mental Health, Heal Trauma, Promote Family Stability, and Reunification
(Eastern San Gabriel Valley, CA) Funding partners Supervisor Hilda L. Solis, (First District), the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health-Office of Violence Prevention (administered by the Los Angeles Center for Alcohol and Drug Abuse), and the S. Mark Taper Foundation are supporting BFFI, a pilot project that uses an evidence-based, trauma informed curriculum to train, develop and certify skilled graduate students to serve as coaches who provide weekly in-home coaching to children and their families referred by the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) or from other organizations who work with at-risk families. Their investment in BFFI enabled them to amplify their professionalism, increase the number children and families served, improve their evidence-based training by including Motivational Interviewing (MI). MI is a training technique that facilitates positive behavioral changes in families that suffer from addictions, domestic violence, anxieties, depression, and ideas of suicide. The goal is to keep children and their parents safely together, prevent stacked trauma, and break the cycle of homelessness, addiction, suicides, depression and anxieties.
Research Improves Return on Investment for Our Funding Partners.
Research shows that healing trauma and facilitating family bonding by reunification or other permanent placement result in favorable outcomes for at-risk children. Support from our funding partners has made a pivotal difference for BFFI and for the families we serve by enhancing and upgrading technology methods to collect important data to help make informed decisions about what is working and the changes that may be needed to meet the multiple needs of children, youth, and their families. This improved technological upgrade enabled BFFI to measure positive outcomes, adapt the program where needed, and scale the program to reach more children and families in the future.
BFFI’s goal is to ameliorate the traumas that accompany family discord and violence and to arrive at solutions for reunifying families and to creating relationships and environments free of trauma, violence and crime. Investment in the program helped BFFI to develop a system for collecting data utilizing the special skills of the research-informed graduate students combined with the analytical skills of undergraduate interns enrolled in psychology programs. The undergraduate interns observe family engagement, collect data and help to assess and develop strategies, mechanisms or conditions for improving research use to help heal trauma.
We are grateful to all of our supporters for the opportunity to help families heal and thrive. With your continuous support we will maximize the return on investment to address the root causes of family trauma and build on the effective training strategies for expanding the tools, skills and resources available. This will result in positive outcomes in the vision we share to heal trauma, prevent and intervene on violence in the community, and help to build a better life for struggling families.
Donate: Increase the number of coaches working with families to help break the cycle of abuse, neglect, abandonment and domestic violence and make a difference in the wellbeing of children and their families.
BFFI's Master Trainer
Danielle Lascano, Ed.D, LMFT, RPT, CGP - Chair & Assistant Professor, Azusa Pacific University, Department of Marriage & Family Therapy & Master of Science in Counseling Psychology
Dr. Lascano is BFFI’s Master Trainer and a member of the founding team. She helped to develop and craft an evidence-based training curriculum designed to train, develop, and certify graduate students to serve as family coaches. BFFI’s curriculum includes training family coaches to provide direct, upfront coaching support for families involved in foster care and to survivors of domestic violence. “I am proud of our students, who are specializing in meeting the mental, emotional, and behavioral needs of children and youth, especially children who have experienced serious physical harm, trauma and who are exposed to violence against one of the parents. Helping to build strong parent-child relationships is the formula for breaking the cycle of violence in our communities, and to eliminating abuse, neglect and maltreatment.”
Kathryn Ecklund, Ph.D. - Program Curriculum Consultant and BFFI Clinical Supervisor
Dr. Ecklund is a seasoned educator, clinician, and program consultant dedicated to advancing community-based substance misuse treatment and behavioral health services. Currently serving as a Professor of Psychology at Azusa Pacific University (APU), Dr. Ecklund has been instrumental in shaping the next generation of behavioral health and substance use professionals. Her leadership extends beyond the classroom as she actively engages in research and program development aimed at promoting behavioral and mental well-being among children, youth, and families, and addressing substance misuse among youth and adults. Dr. Ecklund serves as a Program Curriculum Consultant and Clinical Supervisor for Building Forever Families, contributing to the development and implementation of effective intervention programs to promote healthy parent skills and parent child relationships among families involved in the DCSF system of care. With a steadfast commitment to equity and inclusivity, Dr. Ecklund actively seeks to empower underserved communities through strategic partnerships and evidence-based interventions, as reflected in her clinical director and supervisory roles with Pacific Life Life, Heart2Serve, and as the HRSA clinical supervisor for multiple SUD treatment programs within Los Angeles County.
Vanessa Santana - BFFI Family Coach
Vanessa Santana is currently attending Azusa Pacific University where she is finishing her Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology, Marriage and Family Therapy. She is currently a family coach at BFFI. Being a family coach has impacted her greatly. “I have been able to see first-hand the empowerment I am instilling in our families during such a difficult time. Knowing that my work with our families can guide them in making decisions that can positively impact their children’s lives is what motivates me most to continue the work that I do.”
Ashley Bagwell - BFFI Family Coach
Ashley Bagwell joined BFFI as a Family Coach in the Fall of 2023. She is currently finishing her Master's degree in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Marriage and Family Therapy at Azusa Pacific University and will be graduating this December. “It is an honor for me to work alongside our families and support them through coaching as they work hard to implement new skills and break generational patterns. I am inspired by the families' resilience to work through such a difficult time in their lives in order to create a safer and healthier environment for their children.”
Andrew Coté - BFFI Family Coach
Andrew Coté is currently enrolled at Azusa Pacific University to get an M.S. Counseling Psychology with a Specialization in Children and Adolescents, working toward LPCC licensure. He has worked with BFFI as a Family Coach for 4 months, and, in that time, has not only learned about the complex needs of families but also witnessed the resilience of parents and children who are genuinely motivated to rebuild their lives and support one another. “The opportunity to come alongside these families to provide logistical and educational support has been an honor through which I have grown in patience and compassion. Navigating each family’s complex relationships and challenges has revealed first hand to me the importance of holistic and sustained support and I look forward to building my skills further so that I can continue to be an asset to families and children who desire to be empowered toward growth and change.”
Isabelle Ramos - Community Care Coordinator
Isabelle Ramos is an Undergraduate Senior at Azusa Pacific in the school of Behavior and Applied Sciences majoring in Psychology with a Drug and Alcohol Counseling Minor. At BFFI, she works with the graduate Coaches in monitoring and translating by reaching out to spanish-speaking families to lessen the language barrier, so that these families may also receive the necessary resources. “This opportunity has shown me the ups and downs of working with families who have taken the step of reaching out and receiving the help they want or need.”
Joanna McCann - Community Care Coordinator
Joanna McCann is a student at Azusa Pacific University with a major in Psychology. In her role at BFFI, she observes meetings between parents and an MFT coach, with the ultimate goal of reunification. She spends most of her time doing case management work, which requires her to retrieve any necessary resources that the parents may need to help them get their life on track. “It has impacted me in a positive way and is making me a more appealing candidate for the MFT graduate school program.”
Megan Bolinger - Community Care Coordinator
Megan Bolinger is an Undergraduate Junior at Azusa Pacific University. Next year she will be graduating with her B.A. in Psychology, and then she will be pursuing her Master’s degree. “As an intern for BFFI, I am so grateful to be able to help families in the community, which is something I am very passionate about. BFFI has helped me learn how to apply what I am learning in class in the field, as well as figure out my future career path.”
Marci Yanagawa - Community Care Coordinator
Marci Yanagawa is a full-time undergraduate student at Azusa Pacific University. She is in her last year of the Undergraduate Psychology program, with a plan to pursue a Master’s degree in Organizational Psychology. As an intern at BFFI, she has taken on two roles: (1) observing visitation hours with clients and family coaches, (2) assisting the Executive Director—Esther Torrez in building organizational capacity. Due to her passion for Organizational Psychology, she thoroughly enjoys working alongside the Executive Director, in order to build a framework to serve 100 to 150 children and their families and strengthen the organization’s infrastructure. “I believe in the amazing work that BFFI strives to do and hope that my efforts will allow BFFI to impact an exponential number of families in the years to come.”