You can use our on-line contact form, or email us at info@ctyouthandfamilies.org, or call us at 860-838-3553. If we are unavailable, please leave a message and we will return your call the same day. Our usual office hours are Monday through Friday 10-6 p.m. We also schedule services and recovery support in the evenings and on weekends if needed. However we are not a crisis center, or hotline that handles emergency calls 24 hours a day. If you are seeking online support you are in the right place visit our recovery coach page to find a trained youth or family to connect with for support.

We serve families with youth ages 13-25. That age range is actually broader, since we also serve families, including younger siblings and grandparents and community organizations.

Our vision is for Connecticut's youth and families to be addiction-free, healthy members of strong families and communities.

Our mission is to help youth and families facing drug and alcohol problems connect with prevention, treatment, and recovery services through a statewide network of peer-to-peer supports. We are a unified voice of people who have "been there" working together to strengthen families and communities, improve policies and practices, and, above all, save lives.

Our top three areas of focus are:



1. Peer-to-Peer Recovery Support Services: We enable youth and family peers in stable recovery and other community members to reach out, support and help others to prevent alcohol and drug addiction, and initiate and/ or sustain recovery.
   


2. Advocacy to Increase Access: We organize youth and families as a peer recovery community that provides public education for increasing access and to affect systems and policy change.
   


3. Connect With the Community: Connecting, reconnecting and cultivating strong and healthy new relationships contribute to enduring recovery. The chats, blogs and our community events help to make that happen.
   

Our youth are dying from drug and alcohol problems. Our youth matter, our families matter, and it is time for a change in the way we approach substance abuse and addiction issues. We get many calls every day from desperate parents who don't know where to go and how to get help for their kids' alcohol and drug use issues. Youth and families are turning to other youth in recovery to help remove the barriers for accessing recovery support. How can we get more residential and community based treatment and recovery support if there is no strong statewide unified voice and leadership for youth and family substance prevention, treatment and recovery issues? How can we get a more authentic youth and family recovery voice at the policy table? While there are parent volunteers in towns across Connecticut trying to support other families around kitchen tables, in church basements and school auditoriums, there is no one place to go where it all comes together, where youth and families can access what information and supports exist. We are youth and family volunteers who are dedicated to "keep running with the flag," we have established this website, are in the process of becoming incorporated as a non-profit 501c3 organization, have built a Board of Directors, Technical Advisors, and are growing our team of trained recovery coaches, members, volunteers and advocates here to serve you.

CTYF works to lead, support and organize our youth, families, and communities' ability to care. We do this by working to:

• Help youth and families to stay clean, sober and healthy.
• Help youth and families to know they are not alone, turning to other youth and families who have been there and have experience is a place to turn where you will always feel welcomed, get support, strength and understanding.
• Help your voice to be heard and united with other voices across Connecticut.
• Remove the barriers that prevent access to prevention, treatment, and recovery.
• Change public and policymaker attitudes, and show people that alcohol and drug problems are a family disease. While prevention, treatment and recovery is happening in Connecticut--we need to see more of it.

CTYF is a statewide organization established in 2006 with help from the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment and the Connecticut Department of Children and Families. We are parents and youth who have our own family stories and are offering our help to other youth and families. The original founders were already engaged in various forms of family support and advocacy statewide and in their local communities. They also received grants to further advance their work. Families United for Children's Mental Health and FAVOR initially managed the tasks of the grant for DCF and served as the fiduciary until September 30, 2008 when the grant funds ended. It was at a September 2008 Strategic Planning Kick Off conference at Killams Point which sparked a new level of volunteer energy, leadership and direction to accomplish the next phase of work as a nonprofit organization with an enhanced vision and mission.

No. While we collaborate with treatment providers, we are not treatment providers ourselves.

No. CTYF welcomes and embraces people with all types of alcohol and other drug experiences and recovery. We believe there are many paths to health, wellness and recovery. Living alcohol and drug addiction free is possible, and we highlight promising practices that work. We highlight the diversity of youth and families in Connecticut, from every walk of life that have found prevention, treatment, recovery supports that work.

We believe youth and families should receive culturally relevant care that is accessible and respects their language, customs, values, gender, sexual orientation, religious and spiritual beliefs, geography and morals that has the capacity to respond to the individuals' unique family, culture, traditions, strengths and gender. To that end we are striving as one of our goals to:

• Publish as much content as possible in Spanish (including a Spanish video coming out soon).
• Have members and recovery coaches in all parts of the state and located in ethnically defined neighborhoods.
• Have members who can speak different languages.
• Have diverse youth and families who understand culturally competent literature, training, aspects of the website, and other programs.
• Measure our access and performance among identifiable populations.
• Develop linkages with community based agencies that have culturally competent programs.
• Provide interpreter services for the hearing impaired or with different languages.

We believe the language of addiction and recovery needs to change. Science tells us that alcoholism is an addiction. We also know that addiction is a disease. Yet many people find these terms troubling. At the CCAR recovery walk for instance we learned from advocates, youth and parents that they found our use of terms such as "substance abuse" and "abuse" disturbing. We do not want to undermine others understanding that this is not a moral failure it is an illness and we need to all work carefully on our language to get rid of the stigma. We are not perfect yet, we need to work together to change our language and limit our labels. We welcome your guidance and input as we work to be consistent and get it right.

Many youth don't see their alcohol and drug use as a problem, they see it as the answer to their problems. Many parents do not see their kids as addicts. Some youth are and some youth are not. Some youth have issues related to alcohol and drug use. Our work is about it all from raising awareness, to education, to changing attitudes, to mobilizing the community, to prevention, to helping increase access, to quality treatment, to recovery support. We are youth and families in recovery with experience with alcohol and other drug prevention and treatment.

We believe youth with mental health problems and active substance use, as well as youth with other problems and substance use, should have access to integrated help and support. We believe that youth and families need services and supports from professionals that are sensitive to the needs of all types of people, with all types of problems and that they should have appropriate assessments, appropriate referrals, supports for combination issues. Sometimes one issue is more serious, sometimes simultaneous help is needed. We are not treatment providers but we can help support you in making the connections you need and can provide caring support and cheerleading along the way.

Alcohol, drug use and addiction is a public health problem that affects the whole person, the whole family, and the whole community. Sometimes when some people have anxiety and depression we self medicate. We know that it impacts judgment, impulses, motivation and decision-making. Many youth and families often have a wide-range of other health and social consequences. Co-occurring problems are common and not an exception. Youth and families present themselves in different phases of prevention, treatment and recovery continuum, with multiple related issues and different stages of motivation and readiness to change. We see this as a journey and a process sometimes needing an array of linkages, services, interventions and supports that are person-centered, phase and stage specific. We bring a hopeful and optimistic philosophy to help you navigate the waters. This is not the wrong door, and when accessibility is an issue we will try to help you find the door you need.