Question: What Is Foster and Adoptive Parent Training Class PRIDE?

It is important to be prepared and well trained before embarking on foster parenting or completing a foster care adoption. Each state and country utilizes a training program to help prepare and train their foster and adoptive parents. PRIDE is one of those programs.

Answer:

PRIDE stands for Parent Resources for Information, Development, and Education.

It is a program used to prepare and educate families that are interested in providing foster care or in becoming adoptive homes for children in the foster care system.

PRIDE is a competency-based model and is based on the belief that resource families need to have special strengths, knowledge and skills, as well as a community of supports in order to be successful as foster care or adoptive families. The PRIDE curriculum is based on five competencies that promote the need to not only understand how to best help children that have been abused and neglected, but to also strengthen all families (birth, foster, or adoptive).
The five PRIDE competencies include the following set of skills.

1. Foster and adoptive families need to know how to best help a child to feel safe and nurtured.
   
2. Foster and adoptive families need to know how to work to best meet a child’s needs and how to help a child overcome developmental delays.
   
3. Resource families need to know how to best help children build relationships with their birth family.
   

1. Families need to know how to help children build other connections that will sustain them through life.
   
2. Foster and adoptive parents need to understand how to be part of a team that has the goal of helping children and families.
   

PRIDE helps prepare prospective foster and adoptive parents with important information on how trauma impacts a child’s growth and development. The program also helps families know what will be expected of them as foster and adoptive parents.
Parent Resources for Information, Development, and Education (PRIDE)
Consists of nine sessions that are three hours each.
The goal of the PRIDE program is to help agencies enable foster and adoptive families to work with other team members to bring about child safety, well-being, and permanency for each child in the foster care system.

The PRIDE program was designed in partnership with Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, national and international experts, foster and adoptive parents, and staff members from both public and private agencies.

PRIDE is a curriculum that is currently utilized in more than twenty states and twenty countries.

PRIDE States Include:
Arkansas
California
Connecticut
Delaware
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Maryland
Michigan
Nebraska
Nevada
New Jersey
New Mexico
North Dakota
Oklahoma
South Dakota
Texas
Vermont
Virginia
West Virginia
Wyoming

If you are interested in using PRIDE as a part of of your foster or adoptive training program, contact Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) for more information on purchasing the training program.