Training Overview

Spaulding Institute is proud to present the following trainings. We are available to present at your conference and/or workshop settings for 90 minutes, 3 hour or 6 hour presentations.

Spaulding Institute will tailor and customize our training(s) to address your specific training needs for licensing, certification and legislative requirements. Institute staff will come to your site so that your entire staff can be trained at one time in a cost-effective manner.

Please find a more detailed description of some of the trainings below. For more information and to schedule training, please call Ms. Jean Niemann at 248/443-7080 ext. 301 or e-mail her at jniemann@spaulding.org.

Click on the links below to jump to a description of each training.

ADOPTION SUPPORT & PRESERVATION (ASAP)
CURRICULUM TRAINING
This one-four day Adoption Support and Preservation Services curriculum training will highlight the key mental health treatment issues faced by adoptive families. In addition to learning about the ways in which adoption is different than forming families biologically, the training will provide specific tools and techniques to help adoptive families build attachments and maintain their commitment to one another.
Objectives:

• Understand the ways in which adoption is different
• Recognize the universal issues for adoptees
• Identify problems common to adopted children
• Understand the history of adoption
• Be familiar with the adoption process as experienced by adoptive families
• Identify characteristics of successful adopters
• Understand the process of attachment in human development
• Assess and encourage attachment in children who have been part of the child welfare system
• Understand the grieving process and the effects of separation and loss
• Understand techniques to help decrease separation trauma
• Learn intervention strategies and techniques that address underlying emotional isses affecting children who have been adopted
• Recognize the need for collaborating across systems on behalf of adoptive families
• Embrace a non-deficit approach to intervening with adoptive families
• Recognize indicators of disruption and develop techniques to manage these crises
• Reframe crises in adoptive families as normal events

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CHILD ASSESSMENT & PREPARATION (CAP)
CURRICULUM TRAINING
This one to two day training will put forth an ecological, child-focused practice model that can help adoption workers prepare children from the child welfare system for the challenges they will face in the future. Participants will be given the opportunity for hands-on experience with the tools and techniques presented in the training.
Objectives:

• Know the role and responsibility of the practitioner in child preparation and assessment
• Know how to prepare the child for media exposure, open adoption issues and leaving
• Helping children to disengage, grieve and attach to a “new “family
• Understand how the child disability may impact this process
• Supporting the child through the waiting process
• Know specialized interviewing, assessment and casework strategies that are effective with children and adolescents, including lifebook, video technology, stories and play
• Be able to assess the readiness for adoption
• Know developmental stages of children and the ability to assess the child’s current level of functioning and the effects of placement on growth and development
• Determine the services needed by the child, regardless of the family selected
• Know how to help resource families develop appropriate expectations for children
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CONCURRENT PLANNING
This one or two day session will assist workers in understanding and balancing their efforts towards family reunification while, at the same time, developing an alternative permanent plan. The session will focus on the philosophy and case management methods used in concurrent planning.
Objectives:

• Explore the relationship between foster care outcomes and the agency’s approach and parental situation
• The use of empowering tools and practice in working with families
• How to manage risk and support birth families
• The importance of recruiting, developing and supporting foster/adoptive homes
• Developing reunification plans
• How to perform culturally respectful family and child assessments
• Tools, techniques and strategies to involve families in planning for a child’s future
• Supporting and preparing children throughout the process
• Explore the critical elements of written agreements and documentation skills
• How to work collaboratively with all systems involved with the child and family to assure legally sound case planning

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CULTURAL COMPETENCE IN CHILD WELFARE (CCC)
CURRICULUM TRAINING
This is an intensive three-ten day video driven training that outlines five basic steps in the developmental process of adapting one’s practice to cultural competence. Drawing from the premise that child welfare services must change to meet the diverse and changing needs of children and communities, the training focuses on four cultural groups; African American, Asian/Pacific, Hispanic/Latino and Native American. This training includes an administrative day that focuses on the administrative role in this changing environment.
Objectives:

• To identify specific roles and related skills for culturally competent child welfare practice, policy development and administration
• To increase knowledge and understanding of the African American, Asian/Pacific American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American cultural groups and their respective family values and strengths
• To strengthen services to culturally diverse families and communities of color
• To enhance the capacity of participants to work in cross cultural situations
• To identify strategies that agencies can use to increase cultural competence in practice, administration, and development of policies in child welfare services
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CULTURAL COMPETENCE TRAINING
FOR FOSTER AND ADOPTIVE PARENTS
This intensive three-day video driven training supports foster and adoptive parents in reflecting on and improving their cultural competence in parenting as well as interfacing with other individuals from different cultures. Drawing from the premise that individuals as well as agencies must change to meet the diverse and changing needs of children and communities, the training focuses on four cultural groups; African American, Asian/Pacific, Hispanic/Latino and Native American.
Objectives:

• To identify specific roles and related skills for cultural competence
• To conduct and reflect upon a cultural competency self assessment
• To increase knowledge and understanding of the African American, Asian/Pacific American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American cultural groups and their respective family values and strengths
• To enhance the capacity of participants to work in cross cultural situations with children, other foster and adoptive parents and agency staff
• To identify strategies for all foster and adoptive parents to support their agency’s cultural competence
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DECISION MAKING AND MATCHING
This 1 or 2 day training will explore the most critical elements involved in managing risk and making timely decisions for permanence for children in foster care and adoption. The training will cover family and child assessment issues, the differences in: foster care, pre-matched and new recruited family’s for children and review multiple tools that could be used in team decision making efforts.
Objectives:

• Explore the pressures and risks intrinsic to foster care and adoption placements
• Define risk and risk management
• Identify the three kinds of risk
• Review of the goals of MEPA/IEP
• Provide and overview of an empowerment model for risk management
• Implications for supervisors
• Identify critical organizational risk taking factors
• Identifying your own risk management styles
• Review case studies
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EFFECTIVELY RESPONDING TO THE EMOTIONAL
ASPECTS OF TRAUMA, LOSS AND GRIEF
This one or two day training will explore the emotional issues and painful experience for those dealing with termination of parental rights as well as the issues related to moving children into an adoptive placement. Practical approaches and clinical interventions to supporting families (biological, foster, adoptive) and case managers through the termination of parental rights process. The training will also explore ways to respond to the issues children present who have experienced previous traumatic events.
Objectives:

• To recognize the typical emotional issues and responses of those dealing with TPR
• Examine the emotional issues and behavior challenges those children present throughout the process
• Review periods of transitions and predictable crisis
• To recognize and respond to RAD and PTSD in children
• Provide practical intervention to support children struggling through the stages of grief and other traumatic events
• Provide practical interventions to support biological, foster and adoptive parents
• Identify ways to help case managers and foster parents with the feeling surrounding their role in the process

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FAMILY ASSESSMENT
This one to three day training session will focus on the development of a comprehensive family assessment that will increase participant’s ability to:
Objectives:

• Engage families in the assessment process
• Understand informed decision making
• Conduct assessments that empower families
• Provide assessment that are culturally competent
• Use multiple tools and techniques in performing family preparation and assessment
• Build knowledge and skill in writing a family preparation and assessment summary that contributes to family empowerment
• To develop strategies for collaboration with colleagues
• Understand the different dynamics of foster parent and kinship adoption
• To share and examine strategies for engaging the foster family in the adoption process
• To enhance the capacities of participants to deal with difficult decisions that may be present in foster parent adoption situations
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FAMILY BOUND CURRICULUM TRAINING
This two-day train the trainer session will train agency workers to implement the entire Family Bound Curriculum. The curriculum contains nine psycho-educationally based sessions that explore the issues involved in preparing youth to successfully transition (or re-transition) into a family. It provides tools to help workers prepare adolescents and teens to meet the challenges they face in their search for permanency. Participants will have an opportunity to experience the tools and techniques presented in the training.
Objectives:

• Understand the philosophy of Family Bound
• Understand the issues involved in preparing youth to successfully transition into a family
• Understand the process of attachment for the adolescent as it differs from the process of younger children
• Understand the importance of relationship building using the nine session group format
• Explore the different dynamics that occur in adolescent placements which places different demands on parental figures
• Explore the procedures and supports that allow permanency planning to succeed
• Understand how to plan and set up the group sessions
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MAKING THE COMMITMENT TO ADOPTION
This two-day train the trainer (on the delivery of this four-session training) is a supplement to the PRIDE curriculum designed by CWLA. The target audience is families who only want to adopt and not foster as well as foster parents who are adopting children in their care. Before delivering this training, this curriculum must be tailored to respond to your state’s specific requirements.
Objectives:

• Assist prospective adoptive parents in understanding the process which they must go through to adopt
• Examine the needs of the children awaiting adoption
• Help participants better understand their own strengths, needs and challenges they may encounter as an adoptive family
• Develop competencies deemed necessary to adopt:
  • know how adoptive families are different
  • understand the importance of separation, loss, and grief in adoption
  • understand attachment and its importance in adoption
  • understand the need to anticipate challenges and be able to identify strategies for managing challenges as an adoptive family
  • understand that adoption means making a lifelong commitment to a child

• Assist participants in understanding the purpose of the family preparation and assessment summary or homestudy, what it will include, and how it may be used
• Assist prospective adoptive parents in developing strategies for working with agency staff so that they can make an informed decision about adoption and the adoption of a specific child or specific children
• Define key roles that various child welfare staff, attorneys, judges and other systems, such as the courts, mental health and health, play in the adoption process
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MEPA/IEP
This 1or 2 day training will explore the history and context of MEPA/IEP, the content of the law and the implications for practice.
Objectives:

• Explore the values and assumptions regarding inter-ethnic placement
• Review a brief history of child welfare
• Explore the three challenges of MEPA
• Review of the goals of MEPA/IEP
• Enhance the understanding of the MEPA/IEP and ASFA legislation
• Review the penalties for non compliance
• Identify critical recruitment elements
• Provide an overview of how MEPA/IEP effects each job type/classification
• Increase partnership with families by increasing more information to make informed decisions and family preparation
• Explore the practical applications of tools and techniques that will help you comply with MEPA/IEP
• Examine the impact of MEPA/IEP on practice

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PARENTS AS TENDER HEALERS (PATH)
CURRICULUM TRAINING
This two day train the trainer session will train agency workers as well as foster parents as co-facilitators in preparing resource parents (foster, adoptive and kinship parents) for parenting children who have been abused, neglected and spent time in the child welfare system. The jargon-free Trainer’s Guide is readily used by both parent and professional trainers. The six video vignettes highlight experiences of children and resource families and provide guidance to potential resource families.
Objectives:

• Know how resource families differ from families formed by birth
• Understand how and why children in the child welfare system develop survival behaviors
• Understand the importance of assessing family strengths and using resources successfully
• Understand the importance of separation, loss and grief for children who have
  lived in the child welfare system
• Understand how to help children in transition establish new relationships without giving up former attachments
• Understand attachment and its importance in successfully raising children from the system
• Understand that disciplinary techniques used with children from the child welfare system differ from those used with children living with their birth families
• Understand how to plan for crisis as a predictable part of life as a resource family
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RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION OF
FOSTER AND ADOPTIVE FAMILIES
This 1 to three day training will explore the critical elements to developing and implementing a strategic recruitment and retention plan.
Objectives:

• The Impact of MEPA/IEP and ASFA on Recruitment
• National and Local Trends and Issues
• Presentation skill for recruitment staff
• Identifying the continuum of resource families that will be needed
• An overview of the development of a Strategic Plan
• Identifying Agency/Staff/Community Needs
• Assessing Agency/Staff/Community Capacity
• Community Asset Mapping
• Analyzing and Predicting Trends
• PR/Marketing Principles and Methods
• Developing an image
• Community Relations and Presentation Skills
• Impacting Community Awareness
• Recruiting Appropriate Families
• Developing General Recruitment Events
• Developing Targeted Recruitment Efforts
• Developing Child Specific plans and efforts
• Developing Retention Efforts
• Evaluating your Efforts
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SPECIAL NEEDS ADOPTION (SNAC)
CURRICULUM TRAINING
This one to five day training session of the Special Needs Adoption Curriculum will provide child welfare professionals an opportunity:
Objectives:

• To examine the current needs of the adoption field and the participant’s roles within it; to build knowledge and skill in conducting and empowering the adoption process; to contribute to ethnic competence in adoption practice
• To build skill in the utilization of several tools in the family preparation and assessment process, including the family network diagram, the genogram, and the eco-map
• To build knowledge and skill in writing a family preparation and assessment summary that contributes to family empowerment
• To develop strategies for collaboration with colleagues
• To define key roles the adoption worker plays in post placement services prior to finalization and to enhance the participant's ability to play these roles
• To understand the historical context of foster parent adoption and its effect on present day practice
• To share and examine strategies for engaging the foster family in the adoption process
• To enhance the capacities of participants to deal with difficult decisions that may be present in foster parent adoption situations

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SUCCESSFUL KINSHIP CARE: WHAT FAMILIES SAY WORK
This one day session will explore issues critical to assuring successful permanency placement plans with kinship families, including caseworker attitude, beliefs, skills, knowledge and post-placement supports and services.
Objectives:

• Explore the nuances and complexities of kinship care
• Explore worker values and assumptions about kinship care and how they affect work with the family
• Understand trauma, loss, and grief, experienced by the kinship family
• Review the assessment process from the kinship family’s perspective and the practical applications of tools and techniques that could be used
• Successful searches for kinship resources
• Explore post-placement supports and services families say they need to be successful

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SUPPORTING BIRTH FAMILY DECISION-MAKING
This comprehensive two-day training will focus on developing a child-centered permanency planning team approach that engages birth and extended family members in developing a permanency plan that focuses on safety, support, continuity of relationships and timely permanence. This training will explore the principles of family group decision-making, permanency mediation and concurrent planning.
Objectives:

• Increased understanding of the philosophy and practice of family group decision-making, permanency mediation and concurrent planning approaches
• Increased ability to maintain neutrality and child-centeredness in guiding the permanency planning process
• Practical skills in engaging birth and extended family members, identifying safety parameters, individual caucusing, facilitating team meetings, negotiating a written plan and more

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TIMELY DECISION MAKING AND RISK MANAGEMENT
IN CHILD PLACEMENT PERMANENCY PLANNING
This 1 or 2 day training will explore the most critical elements involved in managing risk and making timely decisions for permanence for children in foster care and adoption. The training will cover family and child assessment issues, the differences in: foster care, pre-matched and new recruited family’s for children and review multiple tools that could be used in team decision making efforts.
Objectives:

• Explore the pressures and risks intrinsic to foster care and adoption placements
• Define risk and risk management
• Identify the three kinds of risk
• Review of the Goals of MEPA
• Provide and overview of an empowerment model for risk management
• Implications for supervisors
• Identify critical organizational risk taking factors
• Identifying your own risk management styles
• Review case studies
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WORKING WITH THE SEXUALLY ABUSED CHILD IN
FOSTER CARE AND ADOPTIVE PLACEMENTS
This training will address sexual abuse and its effects on children and adoptive or foster families. Emphasis will be placed on the family’s role in healing.

Objectives:

• Understand the range of childhood sexual behaviors and warning signs
• Improve methods of interviewing the sexually abused child and completing the assessment using multiple tools and techniques
• Be able to develop successful intervention and treatment plan
• Be able to teach parents how to respond to sexual behaviors and parenting a child who was sexually abused
• Review case examples
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PERMANENCY MEDIATION
This training will provide an overview of The Michigan Permanency Planning Mediation Project as a process to expedite permanency for children in the child welfare system by resolving the issues and disputes that delay permanency planning. This collaborative, child-centered, family-focused permanency-planning model allows birth parents, caregivers, child welfare professionals and resource parents to identify underlying issues and develop a develop alternatives for mutually acceptable resolutions. Facilitated by a neutral third party mediator skilled in conflict resolution and child welfare, the Michigan model allows for a continuum of permanency outcomes for children ranging from reunification with birth parents to adoption.

Objectives:

• Understanding basic principles of mediation and mediation as a process for expediting permanency for children in foster care
• Providing specific strategies to empower families through the process
• Identifying the unique characteristics and special challenges of Permanency Planning Mediation
• Exploring the essential elements for successful Permanency Planning Mediation
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Creating System Change:
Boot Camp for Parent Advocates

Present by Jeff Katz, MSW, MPA
Senior Fellow
Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute

It may not feel like it sometimes, but adoptive parents are the single most effective voice for making adoption and foster care systems work better for children. Put 10 committed parent advocates together in any state and, using the right tools, reform is inevitable. This two-day “boot camp” will give parent advocates the tools they need to be effective advocates for system reform.

What You Will Learn

• Moral authority-why adoptive parents are the most effective advocates for children
• Framing the issues- the power of having the facts on your side
• Adoption- the last bipartisan issue in America
• Working with the legislature- turning legislators into advocates
• Working with the media- How to turn the media into a voice for children
• Stating your case- the power of the op ed
• Building coalitions- the synergy of public private partnerships

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Listening to Parents:
Removing the Barriers to Adoption from Foster Care
Present by Jeff Katz, MSW, MPA
Senior Fellow
Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute

This one-day course will give adoption professionals a window into how their clients experience the adoption process. Conventional wisdom, and the experience of many social workers, is that many children in foster care are not adopted because most prospective adoptive parents are only interested in younger children or are not interested in parenting a child who has been traumatized. But recent research has demonstrated that in one year almost a quarter of a million Americans actually call an adoption agency about adopting a child from foster care. Yet only a small fraction- between 4% and 6%- will actually adopt. Based a large national study and focus groups with prospective adoptive parents, this course will show how small changes in how child welfare agencies treat prospective parents could yield significant results. Understand the hidden barriers that prevent prospective families from adopting children from foster care. Learn the simple tools that can mean permanent families for waiting children.

What You Will Learn

• How families experience the adoption process
• The institutional barriers that prevent families from adopting.
• Why families would rather adopt from foster care than overseas
• The first call: make or break time
• Striking the right balance between recruitment and screening
• How to maximize limited recruiting resources
• How to make recruitment and training more “consumer- friendly”

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