In June, the National Training and Development Curriculum for Foster and Adoptive Parents (NTDC) became available for all agencies, organizations, and others to access for free. This comprehensive new curriculum offers three components:
- Self-Assessment
- Classroom-Based Training
- Right-Time Training
Below we outline how the Right-Time Training can benefit anyone touched by adoption, foster care, and kinship care, even if they are not using the rest of the curriculum.
What Is Right-Time Training?
NTDC’s Right-Time training is designed to provide current and prospective foster, adoptive, and kinship caregivers with timely access to a range of online trainings when they need them. Although Right-Time was developed for parents to access online after completing the NTDC Classroom-Based Training, it can also be used independently. Right-Time is now available to any parent any time they have a need or desire to increase their knowledge and skills about a topic they are experiencing on their journey.
The Right-Time Training covers the following topics:
- Accessing Services and Supports
- Building Children’s Resilience
- Building Parental Resilience
- Common Feelings Associated with Being Adopted
- Education
- Family Dynamics
- Intercountry Adoptions Medical Considerations
- Life Story: Birth Story and Adoption Story
- Managing Placement Transitions
- Preparing for Adulthood
- Preparing for and Managing Visitation
- Responding to Children in Crisis
- Sensory Integration
- Sexual Development and Identity
- Sexual Trauma
Each Right-Time session takes about an hour to complete and includes four components:
- a “My Story” podcast, featuring a young adult with personal foster care or adoption experience;
- a training video, featuring two to three professionals’ perspectives on the theme along with real-life examples of an adoptive or foster family putting the knowledge or strategies to work;
- topical discussion questions to consider; and
- additional related resources.
What Is the Best Way to Use NTDC’s Right-Time Training?
The NTDC Right-Time trainings are very flexible—parents can use them on their own or with parenting partners and can even share them with extended family or support systems to help build understanding. They can pick and choose among the topics based on what’s happening in their current parenting journey or based on the issues a child they may parent is facing.
The trainings can also be used in support groups or with caseworkers to work through challenges together. In support groups, parents and professionals can use Right-Time to guide a group discussion, creating opportunities for caregivers to learn from one another. Discussion questions encourage self-reflection and sharing by group participants. The group can think about individual member’s current challenges or situations, and start with the topics that affect most members.
Agency caseworkers can use Right-Time themes with prospective parents one-on-one to focus on areas of needed growth or to provide child-specific training after a match has been identified. The additional knowledge and skills will support preparation for parenting children from child welfare, intercountry, or private domestic adoption.
After placement, post-adoption or post-guardianship support staff can work with parents to address the challenges the family is facing, and can brainstorm together how to make changes based on what they learned.
What People Say About NTDC and Right-Time Training
The NTDC has undergone a rigorous evaluation in seven pilot sites (states and counties and one tribal nation) and four private agencies that work with families who adopt private domestically or via the intercountry process. During this evaluation, participants noted how NTDC and the Right-Time Training made an impact during their journey:
- “Loved the balance of foster/adopt parents with professionals and then the nice emotional voices of youth. This video addressed a lot of the issues/myths we try to dispel with caregivers. I liked how it started and ended with a foster parent’s real journey. Very well done.”
- “It was very thorough and spoke about understanding the ‘why’ behind behavior, being flexible, and having realistic expectations!”
- “I wish I would have known about this training before our adoption, and when we first started fostering. By far this is the best online training I have ever had. Thank you” (about the Building Children’s Resilience module)
- “I thought it was fantastic. I am in the middle of a lot of this with my 9-year-old from China right now. I started crying reading some of the discussion questions. Just when I started feeling the video needed some adult adoptee voices, they appeared. … Also, giving parents examples of things to say and do was fantastic.”
- “The structure of Right-Time allows me to easily adapt this to my parent support group. They love it and appreciate learning from each other as they watch, listen and process information from real experts, youth with lived experience and other parents who have walked this path of parenting.”
There are two main ways to access the Right-Time Training and the rest of the NTDC curriculum:
- Visit https://ntdcportal.org, then choose Curriculum, then Right-Time Training Materials. You’ll see a list of all topics.
- Visit https://learn.childwelfare.gov/ and scroll down to National Training and Development Curriculum for Foster and Adoptive Parents. After you create a CapLEARN account, you can choose Right-Time Training, pick a topic, and click on the Enroll Me button. At CapLEARN, you can download a certificate of attendance once you have completed the topic.
We encourage you to take advantage of this great free trauma-informed resource!
The National Training and Development Curriculum for Foster and Adoptive Families (NTDC) was funded through a five-year cooperative agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children’s Bureau. This cooperative agreement was led by Spaulding for Children in close partnership with NACAC, the Center for Adoption Support and Education, the National Council for Adoption, the ChildTrauma Academy, and the University of Washington.