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Blended Pre-Service Training Options

New Generation PRIDE Model of Practice

Developed by the Child Welfare League of America

PRIDE: Parent Resources for Information, Development, and Education.

CWLA logoNew Generation PRIDE Model of Practice by CWLA provides child welfare agencies with a standardized practice model that includes a structured framework for a unified approach to assessing and training foster and adoptive (resource) families based on five established competencies.

The CWLA New Generation PRIDE Model of Practice includes a blended pre-service training curriculum for potential resource parents. The curriculum blends FPC's research-based courses and training approach with the established CWLA PRIDE pre-service curriculum. Blending these two recognized approaches cuts the amount of in-person training time and allows parents to experience much of the training within the comfort of their home. The pre-service component of the Model of Practice combines five in-person meetings based on the PRIDE curriculum with a total of 12 FPC online pre-service classes grouped into five sets of FPC courses to be viewed between the in-person meetings.

CWLA PRIDE Model of Practice Overview

For over two decades, the CWLA PRIDE Model of Practice has increased opportunities for child welfare agencies to provide a structured framework for the professional development of foster and adoptive families. This Model is more than a curriculum; it includes the competency-based recruitment, preparation, assessment, selection, and support of resource parents. The PRIDE Model of Practice is used, in whole or in part, across the United States and in more than 25 countries.

The PRIDE Model of Practice is built upon five core competency categories developed through comprehensive role analysis:

  • protecting and nurturing children
  • meeting children's developmental needs and addressing their delays
  • supporting relationships with birth families
  • connecting children to safe, nurturing relationships intended to last a lifetime (permanency)
  • working as a member of a professional team

Strengthening the Quality of Care

The PRIDE Model of Practice provides the opportunity to ensure that staff and resource families commit to your agency's vision, mission, and values. The Model supports staff and parents to have complementary competency-based roles in the care of children. The Practice uses strengths-based language, implements culturally responsive best practices, and teaches trauma-informed skills, so that staff and parents can work together to achieve outcomes that support safety, well-being, and permanency for the children in care.

The PRIDE Model of Practice 14-step model develops and supports foster and adoptive families as team members in child protection. It is designed to strengthen the quality of family foster care and adoption services through:

  • clarifying the role of resource families in support of the agency's vision and mission
  • integrating resource families as core members of the agency's team
  • educating communities about the importance of resource families
  • recruiting families based on a strengths/needs, comprehensive plan
  • providing blended in-person/online pre-service training around five core competencies
  • integrating pre-service training as an essential component of the mutual family assessment (home study) process
  • selecting resource families based on the five core competencies
  • matching children with licensed (approved, certified, verified) resource families
  • creating family development plans to guide ongoing professional development of foster parents
  • providing in-service training and other essential supports
  • ending relationships with resource families, using a strengths-based approach and a quality assurance process

CWLA can arrange to provide a variety of levels of support to states and agencies when implementing the New Generation PRIDE Model of Practice. In addition, the licensing fee includes free updates to the curriculum. When contracted, Foster Parent College offers free support to both staff and parents on the use of the website.

Benefits of The New Generation PRIDE

For Agencies and Parents:

  • enhancing trauma-informed parenting information and skills
  • focusing on the impact of fostering on all members of prospective foster families
  • reducing parent costs, travel, and time away from home
  • enabling parents to learn at their own pace and time
  • demonstrating examples through interactive vignettes
  • reemphasizing the practice of mutual assessment

For Agencies:

  • standardizing the content and quality of training
  • allowing more staff time to provide one-on-one support
  • providing in-depth core training
  • offering research-based training techniques
  • increasing training opportunities for staff and potentially providing CEU credits
  • being adaptable to local requirements
  • helping the agency offer a structured yet flexible training schedule to potential resource families

Organization of Training

CWLA New Generation PRIDE Curriculum Sessions and Clusters

This research-based training approach is organized into five in-person group sessions and 12 online training courses. The online courses are bundled into four clusters, which are available for viewing 24/7 at the convenience of the parents. Both the online and in-person sessions feature highly dynamic, interactive learning activities that key in on trauma-informed parenting knowledge and skills.

In-Person Session 1:

Connecting with the PRIDE Model of Practice at group meeting site.

Online Courses Cluster 1:

  • Child Abuse & Neglect This course is Closed CaptionedDisponible en español
  • Child Development This course is Closed CaptionedDisponible en español
  • The Child Welfare Team This course is Closed CaptionedDisponible en español

In-Person Session 2:

Protecting and Nurturing Children at group meeting site.

Online Courses Cluster 2:

  • Caring for Children Who Have Been Sexually Abused This course is Closed CaptionedDisponible en español
  • Parent-Child Attachment This course is Closed CaptionedDisponible en español
  • Understanding Behavior in Foster Children This course is Closed CaptionedDisponible en español

In-Person Session 3:

Meeting Children's Developmental Needs: Separation and Loss, Trauma, Resilience at group meeting site.

Online Courses Cluster 3:

  • Cultural Issues in Parenting This course is Closed CaptionedDisponible en español
  • Trauma-Informed Parenting This course is Closed CaptionedDisponible en español
  • Working Together with Primary Families This course is Closed CaptionedDisponible en español

In-Person Session 4:

Supporting Relationships Between Children and Their Families at group meeting site.

Online Courses Cluster 4:

  • Foster Care to Adoption This course is Closed CaptionedDisponible en español
  • Reducing Family Stress This course is Closed CaptionedDisponible en español
  • The Impact of Fostering on Birth Children This course is Closed CaptionedDisponible en español

In-Person Session 5:

Planning for Change at group meeting site.

Research Supported

Foster Parent College and its parent company, Northwest Media, Inc., innovated the design and use of blended pre-service training for resource parents. Partnering with the Institute for Human Services of Ohio, we created 10 online courses based on their in-person meetings. These courses were developed with funding from an SBIR grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

As these courses were being developed, the idea of blended training began. Blended training was uncommon at the time, and with approval from NICHD, we revised the research design for our study under the grant to evaluate the effectiveness of the entire blended pre-service training curriculum instead of each of the individual online pre-service courses we had developed.

The research study (conducted with the State of Oregon Department of Human Services) found that the blended curriculum produced a significantly lower training dropout rate of adults preparing to become foster parents than a comparable classroom-only training program. Additionally, parents in the blended training group made significantly greater pre- to post-test gains in knowledge of the presented information than parents in the traditional classroom-only training group. While both study groups made significant gains in awareness of parenting issues, those gains were greater for the classroom-only approach. At a 3-month follow-up assessment, both groups had maintained their gains in knowledge and awareness. An article in the journal Child Welfare (Vol.93, #6, pp. 45-72), titled Efficacy of Blended Preservice Training for Resource Parents, reports on the results of this study.

This blended training approach, now known as FPC-IHS Blended In-Person and Online Pre-Service Training for Resource Parents, has been recognized by the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare (CEBC), where it received a "Promising Research Evidence" rating with "High" relevance to child welfare.