How should I re-establish bad credit with credit card companies? I've never been defauler for utilties,city ?

I lived in Austin TX for at least 6 years. I got very good credit but during the last 2 years i didn't have proper jobs and used to get unemployment still i was making minimum payments. But for the last 6 months i got stuck up hand to mouth and couldn't make the payment and credit card companies put me on collection inspite of the fact that i used to make payments on monthly payment protection plan. Anyway now I'm in the position to at least continue making minimum payments is there any fed program to convince credit card company to stop hearting the credit cosidering the present econmic condition and they shouldn't assume that every1 is the same?