C3 Creating Systems Change: Building Adoption Competency in Child Welfare and Mental Health

Emily Smith Goering; Theresa Thurmond

Child-welfare professionals and mental health therapists serving children and families who are achieving permanency through adoption/guardianship often have a limited understanding of the complex issues that complicate or contribute to common mental health problems. These include trauma; grief; loss; identity and many others. This presentation will highlight the need for adoption mental health competency training for child-welfare and mental-health professionals; and it will present the National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative’s (NTI) efforts to create systems change to better address the mental health needs of children who have achieved permanency through adoption or guardianship. NTI has piloted a state-of-the-art; evidence-informed; web-based training initiative. This presentation will discuss the pilot (which includes California); core competencies of the curriculum; initial evaluation findings; and challenges and successes of implementing a web-based curriculum in our pilot sites.