Recruitment Training and Support Update

In January 2005, Orange County will began full implementation of the Family to Family PRIDE model of trainingfoster parents. The PRIDE model is designed to teach knowledge and skills in the following five essential competency categories for foster and adoptive parents:

• Protecting and nurturing children;

• Meeting children's developmental needs, and addressing developmental delays;

• Supporting relationships between children and their families;

• Connecting children to safe, nurturing relationships intended to last a lifetime; and

• Working as a member of a professional team.

PRIDE is a series of nine classes that are provided for prospective resource families. One of the major components of PRIDE involves the participation of veteran foster parents as equal partners in the training process. Careful attention is also paid to targeted skill building to help Foster Parents to better engage birth parents and increasing the voice of youth by incorporating them into pre-service. This model also focuses on bringing and keeping right types of resource families

New efforts of recruiting, training and supporting our resource families continue to be developed in Orange County.

A grant was recently secured with the focus of developing an effective campaign to recruit resource families.