IK needs to stay connected at ankle, how to keep connected?

Hi, you need to parent the bones that control the feet to the root bone.
If you want me to have a close look delete every thing except the armature and save the file and post it here.

I was trying to keep these bones from separating altogether, especially when I move the foot itself, but I couldn’t find a decent method of doing it. I’ll attach a file in case you wanted to check it out: rig-only.blend (676.3 KB)

Hi, i had a look at your file what you need to do (and this presuming you want to keep the reverse knee setup)
Delete the the last two bones and extrude a new bone from the lower leg and another one from that bone for the toe, then add the ik to the new bone and parent the ik goal to the root bone.Also your back control needs to be parented to the root bone.
will make an example for you later today.

Here it is:

REVERSE_KNEE_RIG.blend (561.7 KB)

Your bones are parented but not connected. I mean leg and foot. You must change there type of parenting by parenting it in edit mode.

You will need to move the knee bone on my rig further forward to be able to animate the bending properly.