CYFC Children Youth Family Consortium

Who We Are


	Why We Started

	The Children, Youth and Family Consortium (CYFC) at the University of Minnesota began in 1991. The intent of the founders, appointed by then U of MN president Nils Hasselmo, was to ensure that the knowledge and resources of the University of Minnesota did not remain in libraries or office shelves, but were actively put to work to benefit Minnesota’s children, youth and families. Originally called “The All University-Community Consortium on Children Youth and Families,” CYFC served as a catalyst to create partnerships with community practitioners and University faculty and staff from a variety of disciplines to create discussions and engage communities in identifying and finding solutions to issues facing children and families. In the beggining, CYFC was intentionally established as a “stand-alone” unit not under the auspices of any department, school or college, so it would not be connected to any one discipline and could more easily create multi-disciplinary partnerships. It was not a teaching or research unit, but rather a unit that would serve as a catalyst for research and teaching to be more fully utilized in communities, and for communities to make connections TO the University regarding issues of common interest. The founders talked about the idea of CYFC “giving away information.” In spring of 2009 CYFC began a process of interviewing deans and administrators across the campus to identify potential new administrative homes for CYFC. On July 1, 2010, CYFC joined University of Minnesota Extension. We report through and work closely with Extension centers for Family Development and Youth Development. The missions, guiding principles and primary functions of CYFC and Extension are well aligned, and there is a particularly close fit with the work of the family development and youth development teams. We each ground our work in an ecodevelopmental model of human development, are committed to serving and learning from communities, and share a commitment to the translation of research evidence to enhance the work of practitioners. CYFC’s transition to Extension offers numerous advantages and opportunities for CYFC, as well as for Extension, and we anticipate that we will complement and extend each other’s work in exciting ways.



	Some of CYFC’s first program work included: • Development of the Consortium Electronic Clearinghouse, an early version of the CYFC website and one of the first featuring on-line research and other credible information related to children and families. • Partnering in Father to Father, a national effort to unite men in the task of being a strong and positive force in their children's lives. • Co-sponsorship of a series of national Family Policy conferences focusing on topics such as fatherhood, work and family, aging, education/learning, and media. • The President’s Interdisciplinary Initiative on Children, Youth and Families that featured a series of Children’s Summits, bringing together University faculty and community partners to focus on issues important to families. Although CYFC’s work has expanded in recent years to include more direct programming and research, its core mission of linking the community and the university for the benefit of Minnesota’s children, youth and families has not changed.