As Amanda Colacicco approaches her third anniversary as Executive Director of Family and Children’s Services of Frontenac, Lennox and Addington (FACSFLA), she describes the role as her “favourite adventure so far.” After more than 20 years in the child welfare sector, returning to the Kingston area where she grew up has felt both familiar and entirely new. “It has been wonderful to be back in the community,” she says, “but certainly back in the community in a very different way.”
What stands out most to her is the character of the region she now serves. Colacicco sees agency partners in Kingston as unusually willing to step into their responsibilities and look for opportunities to collaborate. Her work as ED is framed around three interconnected focuses: looking inward to strengthen the organization, engaging and responding to the local community, and staying attuned to the wider provincial child welfare landscape. “To be able to be in this community to advance local priorities has been a gift,” she says.
One initiative that captures both the urgency and the collaboration of her work is a community-based protocol called Whatever It Takes. Developed with partners including Community Living Kingston, KidsInclusive, Kingston Health Sciences Centre, and Maltby Centre, the protocol responds to a growing group of children and youth with highly complex needs in mental health and developmental services. Coming out of the pandemic, FACSFLA and its partners saw increasing acuity and situations where young people needed live-in placements or very intensive responses that were not readily available. Whatever It Takes gives the community a way to rapidly come together, develop an emergency response plan, and support a child and family until longer-term planning tables can do their work. “It really was to address a systems gap,” Colacicco explains, and it has already reinforced relationships and led to better outcomes.
She is quick to emphasize that FACSFLA does not lead every table. Sometimes the organization convenes and coordinates; sometimes it follows the lead of others. “We really look to take the lead where we have that responsibility and follow the lead of others where we’re looking to support their work,” she says. For Colacicco, the complex challenges facing children, youth, and families now cannot be solved by any one agency or by directives from the province alone. They require systems-level solutions that are rooted in local relationships and resources.
Asked why so many leaders in the helping sector are women, she points first to her own career path. She began in the intimate partner violence sector, a field that has long been women led, and women staffed and has spent much of her career in child welfare, where the workforce is also largely female-identifying. Yet that was not always reflected in leadership. She recalls a mentor pointing to an annual provincial photo of Children’s Aid Society leaders that, for years, was “primarily male-led” even though many staff were women. Over time, that picture began to change: more women and more diverse leaders stepped into senior roles. What mattered to Colacicco was that people noticed and deliberately supported leadership that better reflected the communities and sectors they served.
Looking ahead, she finds hope in both local and provincial investments that take a lifespan view of resilience. She points to things like the Ready, Set, Go policy, a Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services initiative, which extends and deepens support for young people leaving care, and to multi-year, prevention-focused grants like A Great Start for Families: Kahwà:tsire Ronwatiyenawá:se Centre, supported by the Community Foundation. Those kinds of investments, she believes, are “absolutely priceless” because they meet young people and families at critical transition points and help prevent crises later in life.
For the next generation of leaders, Colacicco’s advice echoes the collaborative spirit she embodies. Pay close attention to the changing “picture” of leadership, she suggests, and be intentional about making it more representative. Lean into community tables where real solutions are being built, even when the work is hard, and the problems are complex. Above all, remember that meaningful change in child and family well-being will always depend on people and organizations willing to do, quite literally, whatever it takes.
