Chances for Children’s mission is to nurture the strengths within parent-child relationships in order to promote well-being and healthy development and protect children from birth to age five from the impact of stress, adversity, and trauma.

ABOUT

Who we are

Chances for Children helps build strong, nurturing, caregiver-child relationships that protect and heal young children from the devastating impact of trauma and chronic toxic stress.

Many adverse circumstances, such as violence, isolation, and poverty, can interfere with the creation of positive relationships between parents and children. Positive relationships between parents and children are a robust predictor of child well-being and future resilience. Research reveals that appropriate support services can help struggling families create these positive relationships with their young children. Chances for Children has created an evidence-based model to transform that research into an intervention that enables and strengthens the relationship and bond between caregivers and young children.

GOALS

Our approach

We support the expansion of the caregiver’s capacity to understand the young child’s uniqueness, experiences and needs by using a developmental, relational and historical perspective to reflect together on what the child brings to the relationship with the caregiver. We help to nurture, widen and reflect on the world of parent-child relationships during the critical early years of a child’s development.

STRENGTHEN RELATIONSHIPS

Strengthen relationships between caregivers and their young children.

INCREASE SENSITIVITY

Expand the caregivers’ reflective capacity, increasing their parental sensitivity and their understanding of the unique social-emotional and developmental needs of the young child.

REPAIR TRAUMA

Repair the impact that trauma and separation have on the developing child.

Board of Directors

Board Officers

Board Members

Advisory Board

Felicity von Sück
President and Chairperson
Greenpeace

Elisabeth Mason
Vice President
Stanford Poverty & Technology Lab

Antonia Barba, LCSW
Founder
Inform Transform

Elizabeth Buckner, LCSW
CFC Co-Founder
Pro Bono Program & Clinical Consultant

Rosemary Dooley, Esq.
Partner
McCormick & Dooley

Calvin Chun
Executive Director
JP Morgan

Barbara Green
Retired Managing Director and General Counsel
Allianz Asset Management of America LP

Justin Gee
Treasurer
OMC

David Orr, MDiv, PhD
Secretary
Focus for Democracy

Jacqueline D. Shannon, PhD
Associate Professor and Chair
Early Childhood Education/Art Education Department
Brooklyn College, CUNY

Nikita Banerjea
Executive Director
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.

Toni Haugh
Adjunct Instructor
New York University

Staff

Paola Amaya-Rodriguez, LCSW, PMH-C
Therapist

Fatima Beccar Varela, MSCD, LMSW
Therapist

Elizabeth Buckner, LCSW
Co-Founder, Pro Bono Program & Clinical Consultant

Hillary Mayers, LCSW
Co-Founder, Therapist & Supervisor

Cinzia Mungo, LCSW
Therapist

Annlady Jorge, LMSW, MSEd
Therapist

Silvia Juarez-Marazzo, LCSW-R, NCPsyA
Executive Director

Beatrice Kessler-Goldsmith, LCSW-R
Senior Therapist

Anjette Rostock, MA, LCSW
Therapist & Clinical Intake Coordinator

Angela K. Dorn
Chief Operating Officer

Simon Cohen
Strategy Development and Ops Administrator

HISTORY

Our story

The Chances for Children intervention was first developed by Liz Buckner and Hillary Mayers in 2000, when they piloted a program to serve teen parents and their babies. (The results were published in the Infant Mental Health Journal, 2008, vol. 29(4).)

After eight years of expansion and evaluation, both internal and external, that evidenced positive outcomes in over 300 families, CFC expanded its intervention into the larger community of parents through partnerships with a mental health clinic and community centers where it continued to show positive outcomes.

From 2000-2015, CFC operated as a project of larger agencies that served as its financial homes. With fifteen years of solid experience and evaluation data, CFC incorporated as an independent non-profit corporation and received 501(c)3 status in June of 2015.