About Us
The Tift County Commission on Children & Youth collaborative is a Family Connection site and serves as the local decision-making body, bringing community partners together to develop, implement, and evaluate plans that address the serious challenges facing Georgia’s children and families.
The Power of the Network
The Tift County Commission on Children & Youth is the Tift County site of Georgia Family Connection which is a statewide initiative that cultivates public and private collaboration at the local level. Located in all 159 counties, Georgia Family Connection is the largest statewide network of its kind in the nation.
The Tift County Commission on Children & Youth is a nonprofit collaborative organization and shares the Georgia Family Connection focus of improving conditions for children, families, and communities. We work closely with many partners in the community to:
- foster relationships with local partners,
- increase policymakers’ awareness of local issues,
- implement proven programs and practices, and
- leverage additional funding to support the community plan.
The Tift County Commission on Children & Youth, like all Family Connection organizations, brings together—at the same table—the social worker, the nurse, the sheriff, the teacher, the minister, the business person, the public servant, the concerned community member, and parents, then let them figure out the best way to help their kids thrive.
We discuss our visions for our community, assess the needs of our county, then decide how our local organizations can best work together to meet those needs.
Together we set an agenda that establishes our priorities and allocates resources to achieve results for families and children. We measure results for our work by tracking locally selected indicators of child well-being using Georgia KIDS COUNT data. KIDS COUNT is a state and national effort funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to track the status of children.
We believe that local decision-making—grounded in reliable data and best practices—will drive the change we want to see in our community.
Georgia Family Connection, created by the state and private funders in response to Georgia ranking 50th in the nation in child well-being in the 1991 KIDS COUNT report, develops initiatives to combat child abuse and neglect, teen pregnancy, multiple teen births, and truancy. We also work to keep children and youth in school, and support them in graduating on time. We believe that empowering ourselves with data, sharing information, and combining our efforts with other counties will strengthen the state as a whole over time.
While the Tift County Commission on Children & Youth is dedicated to working at the local level to build stronger communities, Georgia Family Connection Partnership (GaFCP) is committed to working at the state level to provide support, data, and best practices to the county collaborative organizations and state partners to improve outcomes for children and families. GaFCP, a public-private nonprofit created and funded by the State of Georgia and private foundations, also manages Georgia KIDS COUNT.
We want our kids to be healthy, ready to start school and do well when they get there, we want our families to be stable and self-sufficient, and we want them to live in strong communities.
Mission:
Our mission is to strengthen families as they develop to their full potential through:
- Building diverse partnerships and developing resources
- Establishing innovative initiatives
- Coordinating a full array of on-going family friendly services
Vision
The citizens are healthy, happy, secure, literate, and responsible. The community cooperates to insure that everyone is productive, motivated, and creative.
About Family Connection
We are part of Family Connection, a Georgia statewide initiative of 159 community collaborative partnerships committed to making measurable improvements for children and families in Georgia.
Our Family Connection Goals
- Healthy Children
- School Readiness
- School Success
- Self-Sufficient Families
- Strong Communities
Our History
The Tift County Commission on Children & Youth (TCCCY), a Family Connection Site, has made a big impact on the togetherness of various agencies in the community. It was formed in June of 1990 by a group of concerned citizens who wanted to ensure the well being of children and their families. In 1991 TCCCY incorporated as a 501 (c) 3. TCCCY continues to serve as the collaborative body coordinating services and programs for children and families. The collaborative works to establish a shared vision, build public and political will for the vision, implement the vision and evaluate the progress and outcomes.
About Georgia Family Connection
Georgia Family Connection is the only statewide network of its kind in the country with partners in all 159 counties working toward measurably better outcomes for our children, families, and communities. This gives us a unique vantage point—not only to see the big picture—but also to operate effectively at a local level.
We disentangle the mess of barriers, service gaps, and inefficiencies obscuring progress for our most vulnerable families. We do that by connecting our partners to resources, helping coordinate and manage efforts, and empowering our communities to craft local solutions based on local decisions.
Georgia Family Connection Partnership (GaFCP) represents and promotes Georgia Family Connection’s work, provides expertise in planning and governance, administers the state-appropriated funds for the local Collaboratives, sets standards of excellence, and helps Collaboratives evaluate their progress.
The state’s designated KIDS COUNT grantee, GaFCP also provides state agencies and policymakers with current, reliable data they need to inform decisions about improving conditions for the communities they serve.
Our Work
At Georgia Family Connection, we work to ensure that all children are healthy, primed for school, and succeed when they get there; families are stable, self-sufficient, and productive; and communities are vibrant, robust, and thriving.
None of these result areas stand in isolation. They overlap. By collaborating across sectors to address them, we nurture children and families who thrive in vibrant communities—everywhere. Because we work toward measurably better outcomes for everyone.
