Northwest Media Gets Grant for Online Marital Education Program for Resource Parents

September 15, 2009

Eugene, OR — Northwest Media, Inc., parent company of FosterParentCollege.com, has received a three-year $1.2 million grant to complete and evaluate a Web-enhanced pre-service training program for prospective resource parents. The Phase II SBIR grant (#2 R44 HD054032-02) was awarded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development.

The grant will be used by Northwest Media in collaboration with the Institute for Human Services of Columbus, OH, to develop online versions of the IHS standardized pre-service training curriculum in current use throughout the United States.

Delivering these components online offers distinct advantages. Online modules can serve as make-up classes for parents who miss a class, which will allow parents and agencies to complete the entire training without having to devote additional resources for a make-up class or having to restart or delay the training. It will give homebound caregivers in the family the opportunity to view the curriculum. The online modules can also be used as an added teaching tool for classroom training, or to reinforce what was taught in-house.

In Phase 1 Northwest Media and Ohio IHS developed the first course, Child Abuse and Neglect. The feasibility study showed that the interactive multimedia delivery was in fact more effective than the classroom delivery in conveying knowledge; it also received higher user satisfaction ratings than the classroom training; and it was slightly more effective than the classroom training in increasing empathy for birth parents. Child Abuse and Neglect is a well-regarded part of the FosterParentCollege.com program.

In Phase II, Northwest Media and IHS will develop and evaluate each of the remaining 11 training modules and evaluate the entire 12-module training program.

FosterParentCollege.com provides online training for foster, adoptive and kinship parents. It is the first and only online resource parent training program to be rated by the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare. It is endorsed by the Canadian Foster Family Association and approved by CASA and National Adoption Center.

For more information about the Institute for Health Services (IHS) in Ohio, please visit (ihs-trainet.com).

To learn more about FosterParentCollege.com, visit fosterparentcollege.com or call 800-777-6636. Northwest Media, Inc. is based in Eugene, Oregon.

For more information about this article, please contact us at press@northwestmedia.com.