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11/15/2023 08:30 AMNorth Haven native Jackie Ford knew she wanted to be involved in child welfare since junior high, having written a report on the subject of child abuse. Even then, she says she “knew at that young age that I wanted to work with children that had been abused or neglected.”
For the past 31 years, Jackie, a master’s level social worker, has worked for the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF), and for the past five years worked as the community outreach coordinator for DCF’s Bureau of External Affairs.
“My work now is all about engaging the community to better understand our department and kind of changing the narrative of how people see DCF,” says Jackie.
She says her role involves informing people that the department is “not just a child-placing agency for foster care. We are more importantly, first and foremost, an agency that is working to keep families together and to strengthen families.”
In accordance with that mission, much of what Jackie does with DCF involves prevention work. As a community coordinator, she brings people together on her television show “Doors to Hope and Healing,” which can be found on YouTube.
She invites several types of people who are affiliated with DCF, including foster parents, its social workers and community providers, and families, who tell stories about the help of the department’s services to overcome their personal struggles.
“We have families come on to say they were experiencing really difficult times in their life, and DCF became involved,” Jackie says.
She says the show is about “letting the viewers that are seeing in their homes, or on YouTube or social media, see that DCF can really help a family and that if a family does find themselves involved with the department, that they don’t have to fear us. They can embrace us and let us provide that help that they need.”
For Jackie, providing families with what they need does not end with television. Embracing the community has also taken form with her creation of the Olive Branch Toy and Gift Shop in Glastonbury. What began as an idea for a Christmas pop-up shop has now evolved into a community space that collects donations year-round for families and children.
“The meaning of the olive branch was to extend homage and goodwill,” Jack says. “The whole concept of the olive branch is not only to provide a support and service, obviously, but it’s also to let the families know that DCF is here to help them.”
When Jackie opened the store during Christmas 2021, she said she had just nine days to pull together a central location “where I could gather all the donations” of Christmas presents for families with open cases with DCF. Her efforts were a success, giving families a day to shop for free and brand new toys and gifts, “gift wrap the things that they’ve chosen for their child and leave the store with a sense of dignity and pride that they actually went shopping for their own children, rather than getting a bag of toys dropped off on their front step,” she says.
As of August, the Olive Branch has operated out of the second floor of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Glastonbury and has gifts for several occasions, from holidays and religious milestones to quinceañeras.
Jackie says Olive Branch for DCF-affiliated families is meant to reduce the stigma of people in need of support from the department, giving them the opportunity to pick out their own gifts as a part of a shopping experience. Such a point is something Jackie teaches as a professor of human services at Post University.
“One of the main concepts in the course that I teach is to let the students know that their goal as a human service professional is to make somebody self-sufficient,” she says. “By doing this for our families…them having that choice and that invitation to come in and pick things that are good for them gives them that feeling of being self-sufficient.”
Jackie says she has seen that feeling manifest in the reactions of DCF-affiliated families who have shopped at the Olive Branch.
Along with being a veteran of DCF and a professor, Jackie is also a member of the Exchange Club to prevent child abuse, and is the board chair of the nonprofit Peace Center of Connecticut. The latter state organization is currently engaging with students across the state who are in the judicial system and do consulting for violence reduction and mediation.
“It’s a statewide initiative. We’re hoping to impact and create more peaceful communities in Connecticut.
To make donations to Olive Branch, email Jackie at ford.jacquelineann@gmail.com.