Families Renewed works to prevent the three crises that do the most damage to a child's life — suicide and self-harm, homelessness, and abuse — by strengthening the family around them, before the crisis arrives.
Four programs, one conviction: prevention costs less and hurts less than rescue, and the family is where prevention actually happens.
Our current focus
Roughly one in five adolescents will hurt themselves on purpose before adulthood. We are building LifeBST — a K–12 framework that teaches every student the behavioral skills that prevent that crisis, rather than waiting to respond to it.
How LifeBST worksPreventing family homelessness costs a fraction of resolving it. Since 2013 we have worked with roughly 150 families to keep them housed — negotiating with landlords, funding grants, and building the budget that keeps it from happening again.
About Finding HomeHarm done to a child echoes for decades — into their health, their relationships, and often into how they raise their own children. We work to interrupt that pattern and help children write a different story.
About this programNew for 2026
An eight-session course for fathers on emotional regulation, communication, discipline that teaches instead of frightens, and repairing a relationship that has been damaged. Grounded in what neuroscience knows about the developing brain.
See the courseMost of what schools do about student mental health is designed to respond after a young person is already struggling. LifeBST asks a different question: what if we taught the skills first?
Life Behavioral Skills Training is a K–12 framework for teaching the competencies that help young people manage emotion, build relationships, make sound decisions, and persevere through difficulty. It is a Tier 1 universal framework — for every student, not only those already in trouble — built on the converging findings of eight established scientific disciplines.
It is designed to be taught by ordinary classroom teachers and by parents, with no clinical staff, no screening, and no diagnosis required. On release the curriculum is intended to be free to use, download, and copy, so that no school or family is priced out of it.
The middle-school curriculum is targeted for completion by the end of 2026. Building it, and giving it away, is funded entirely by people who decide it matters.
Updates from our work, our programs, and the families we serve.
The site has been rebuilt from the ground up, with a clearer picture of what we do today and a place to post news as it happens.
Read itWe are a small organization. What we are able to do in a given year is close to a direct function of who decides to help.
One-time or monthly. Recurring gifts are what let us commit to a family or to a curriculum deadline months in advance.
Give nowWe need prayer warriors, volunteer ambassadors, and people with a heart for families facing homelessness so we can reopen that side of our work.
Get involvedThe Mason-Dixon Ride for Life and the Festival of Life bring the community together around suicide and self-harm prevention.
See events
