Faculty Director and Assistant Professor Shanta Trivedi and Executive Director Aubrey Edwards-Luce
We celebrated CFCC’s 25th Anniversary on September 10, 2025 and hosted the CFCC 2025 Symposium on What Families Need in the Next 25 years on September 11, 2025, at the University of Baltimore School of Law. We are grateful to our amazing speakers and our thoughtful attendees for truth, inspiration, and healing they brought into the room.
We left the celebration with our smiles on our faces. Former CFCC Director and Professor Emerita Barbara Babb provided an accounting of CFCC’s many accomplishments. We saw the beauty of the art by youth at Western Maryland Children Center and witnessed the brilliance and power of our colleagues, friends and Baltimore City Public School students who performed at “Stories from School, Tales from Home” on Wednesday evening. The poems showcased the impact of belonging and loss on children’s lives at home, school, and everywhere in between.
We left the symposium with a deeper understanding of how interlocking biases and barriers are thwarting families’ access to dignity, healing and justice. The data showed that the investment in prevention pays off exponentially, but intentional implementation is need to ensure that communities facing the most barriers have the knowledge, access, and resources to grow alongside those facing fewer barriers. We witnessed our keynote speakers’ powerful deep reflection and learned how multiple systems contribute to generational trauma that creates risk for unnecessary court system involvement. We celebrated five Community Changemakers who inspired us with their “change chats” as they described the impact they are making for Baltimore families. We also deepened our definition of “community” and heard examples of how collaborating with impacted families and working across silos can bring all of us closer to the future we desire and deserve. The CFCC 2025 symposium gave us the hope that we need as we work to secure the support and solutions that families needs in the next 25 years.
As CFCC executes our strategic plan, we will continue to use the expertise that we bring, in collaboration with the expertise of our organizational partners and the families we serve, to We can’t do this work without the support, wisdom, and collaboration of community partners and individuals like you, who are working to improve the lives of children.
On issues affecting families and children, CFCC strives to be a place to exchange ideas, debate notions of justice and equity, and educate and learn from one another. We know that everyone approaches these issues from different viewpoints based on their own experiences with various systems. Even though we may not always agree, we hope that you will continue to engage with us and suggest opportunities for further dialogue.
Our hope is that these sessions sparked new ideas that develop into innovative investments, policies and strategies that advance holistic family well-being. Please share your feedback with us by with us completing an evaluation of the symposium. Thank you to those who have already provided their comments and suggestions. We rely on your input to help improve the symposium each year.
Your attendance helped make this event a great success, and we hope you will join us for future CFCC in-person and virtual events.
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Thank you,
Aubrey and Shanta
