Child welfare practice is demanding. The stakes are high for children and families, and system resources don’t often match needs. The child welfare workforce deserves training of the highest quality, grounded in the best evidence and infused with sensitivity to culture and context.  

Our child welfare trainings reflect key family-centered principles:  1) in order to produce significant change, services must maintain an ecological perspective on family concerns, strengths and solutions; 2) the primary goal is to empower individuals and families to manage their own lives effectively; 3) agency culture and supervision should model the strength-based, collaborative practice we want to see with families.

We offer training for public and private child welfare workers, supervisors and program managers, tailoring the length, scope, and subject matter of training for agency needs.  

Here are our areas of special expertise

• Culturally competent family engagement
• Planning and conducting quality home visits
• In-home safety assessment and planning
• Writing good goals
• Family group decision-making
• Engaging and working with  fathers
• Working effectively with substance affected families
• Family centered practice with children and youth with mental health or behavioral disorders
• Legal skills for child welfare professionals
• Ethics in child welfare
• Safe case closure
• Building resilience in the child welfare workforce
• Designing and implementing evidence-based in-home services
• Improving services to parents with intellectual disabilities

Youth-Specific Topics 

• Improving outcomes for youth in transition from foster care
• Youth-centered team meetings
• Forging permanent connections for youth in out-of-home care
• Positive youth development
• Designing services for pregnant and parenting youth in out-of-home care
• Working with substance-affected youth
• In-home services for LGBTQ youth and their families

All of our trainings in cultural competence focus on understanding and enhancing the strengths and resilience of diverse families and communities. We offer introductory and advanced trainings in cultural competence at the individual and organizational levels. We also offer cultural competence training specifically for supervisors.

Introductory Level

• Increasing awareness and knowledge of diversity and culture
• Basic skill building for cultural competence
• Cultural competence as a framework for ethical practice
• Understanding poverty and class differences

Advanced Level

• Culturally competent interviewing, assessment and intervention
• Family centered practice with diverse families
• Strength-based approaches to reducing disproportional representation of minority youth and families in systems of social control (child welfare, juvenile justice, and educational discipline)

Supervisor/Management Level 

• Recruiting, retaining, and managing a diverse workforce
• Supervising generational diversity
• Supervising cultural competent practice
• Becoming a cultural competence organization: a model for change

Are you tired of attending the same old ethics training year after year? So were we!

As a result, we have expanded our training offerings to include new ethics topics and approaches, as well as training specifically for supervisors and agency administrators.

Here is our current list - stay tuned for more!

• Beyond the Basics: Real Life Ethics for Child Welfare Professional
• Ethics for Targeted Case Management
• Ethics in family support
• Ethics in the workplace
• Ethical supervision
• Ethical program management
• Ethics and cultural competence
• Ethics for correctional professionals
• Enhancing critical thinking

The NRCFCP offers 1, 2, and 3-day trainings and various online options to enhance strength-based supervision.

Our training modules include:

• Reflective supervision
• Giving effective feedback
• Supervising underperforming workers
• Supporting a diverse workforce
• Becoming a stronger leader
• Supporting resilience and workplace safety

To customize a supervisor training for your workforce please contact Training Director Kellee McCrory by phone at 319-467-4288.