Maryland Coalition of Families has some exciting news! This October, our Executive Director, Jane Plapinger, and our Director of Innovation and Strategy, Heidi Rochon, received prestigious awards from two national family peer support organizations.
Jane received the annual Executive Director Award for outstanding leadership. This award is given by the Family Run Executive Director Leadership Association (FREDLA), a national association of some 40 family-run organizations that provide family peer support. Jane has been the Executive Director of MCF for almost eight years. During this time she has successfully secured numerous grant awards and grown MCF’s workforce and funding almost three-fold. Under Jane’s leadership, MCF is a thriving, financially stable organization that provides high-quality family peer support and navigation services to thousands of Maryland families each year.
Director of Innovation and Strategy Heidi Rochon was awarded the Family Peer Support Award by the National Federation of Families. The Federation has 120 chapters that provide family peer support to families across the country. The Family Peer Support Award is presented to honor and acknowledge an individual who has:
- contributed significantly to the family peer support field
- personal experience providing exemplary family peer support directly to families
- contributed to the expansion of the family support workforce by training other parents
No one fits this description more than Heidi. She has been in the family peer support field for over 20 years, first serving as a family advocate, then building out a family peer support workforce on the Eastern Shore, and finally developing family peer support practices for MCF that have served as national models as well. She has been instrumental in developing a training curriculum for Family Peer Support Specialists and expanding the family peer support workforce by recruiting and training family members in the field.
We are fortunate to have two such outstanding leaders at MCF. They have made MCF one of the premier family-run family peer support organizations in the country. Thank you, Jane and Heidi for all of your passion, commitment and hard work!