This year marks the 25th anniversary of a charity set up to help families.

But Family Centre founder Martha Dismont said she was focused on the future not the past.

Ms Dismont said: “It re-energises us year after year when you see families come in one door and go out the other door feeling whole and feeling empowered — that’s what keeps us going.”

She is most proud of giving vulnerable children a “fighting chance for success”, helping families improve and attracting high quality professionals to work with the organisation.

Ms Dismont also lists the charity becoming the first social service agency in Bermuda to receive international accreditation and a commitment to the core values and principles of “fairness”, “transparency”, “accountability”, and “do no harm” among her proudest achievements.

But she added that, despite beginning to see some change, she is more concerned than ever about what the future holds.

“What we are seeing today in 2015, is as a result of the collective experience of children 25 years ago,” according to Ms Dismont.

“We’re more concerned today with what we’re seeing than what we saw 25 years ago.”

Ms Dismont questioned what another 25 years down the road will bring if nothing is done now to “get in front of this in a huge way. We owe it to the children of this community to preserve this community for the next ten, 20 years,” she said.

Founded in 1990 as the Learning Centre, the organisation tutored children “who were falling through the cracks of the education system”.

It has since evolved to provide clinical services for individuals and families.

“Our aim is to strengthen families and also systems because we saw in 1996 that services were not at the capacity that was needed to really help families,” Ms Dismont said.

“We decided that our mission wouldn’t just be about seeing a family, but it would also be about working with systems so that we would, as a collective of service providers, have a network continuum of services that meets the needs of families in the community.”

Over the years, the organisation has pushed hard to raise best practice standards, which led to the establishment of the Bermuda National Standards Committee.

The charity is now working hard to identify gaps in the services available in Bermuda and will showcase a map highlighting what is available and who is doing what at a meeting of social service agencies in September. But as the charity increased its focus on clinical services, it also broadened its age range.

“We really started our service focusing on four to 10-year-olds to get in there early and there is still so much need for that today, but we’ve had to increase our age to 14-year-olds just to catch the ones falling through the cracks that weren’t caught,” Ms Dismont said.

In 2007, the organisation also started working with schools to identify the challenges children face and what can be done to help. It has since branched out to Dellwood Middle School through its focus on North East Hamilton with the Youth Development Zone.

The organisation also added an advocacy and training component to help build the capacity of parents, professionals, organisations and the community

But Ms Dismont said more and more families are struggling because of the economy.

She added: “If we can just come together and agree upon what we want as a country, we’ll be better on the other end and we will prevent some of the challenges that we might face in ten years or less in terms of the way kids have been raised today.”

To celebrate its 25th anniversary, Family Centre will be throwing its annual Beach Bash at the Fairmont Southampton Ocean Club on September 25.

It will also host a telethon on November 19 to raise funds and awareness.