Recruitment
Training and Support Update
In
January 2005, Orange County will began full implementation
of the Family to Family PRIDE model of training foster
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
The Eighth Annual
Foster Parent Conference, “Sailing
the Waves of Change,” took place on May 7th at the
Hyatt Regency Orange County in Anaheim. The Conference was
highlighted by Keynote Speaker Regina Louise Kerr-Taylor,
author of the best selling memoir, “Somebody’s
Someone.” This keynote presentation was followed by
a series of workshops designed to further develop and enhance
the skills of the foster parents.
New efforts of recruiting, training and supporting our resource
families, continue to be developed in Orange County.
Current efforts include a:
- Redevelopment
of the www.oc4kids.com website
to be more user friendly.
- Redesign
of recruitment materials to make them more user friendly.
- “City
by City” Campaign
that focuses on the strengths of individual communities
to recruit additional resource families.
- Media
campaign in partnership with the Public Relations Society
of America.
- Focus
on creating structure to support relative caregivers.
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