Community Resource Adoptive & Foster Family Training

Vision Statement

The Community Resource Adoptive and Foster Family Training (CRAFFT) initiative is a statewide program whose primary focus is training and supporting resource, foster, kinship, and adoptive families throughout Virginia. The state is divided into six service areas and each area has a designated CRAFFT coordinator who works at a state University within/bordering the service area. The two coordinators, serving the Western and Piedmont areas of Virginia, work at the School of Social Work with the ICF. The goals of the CRAFFT program are directly related to state program improvement goals that focus on better outcomes for children in our foster care system.

Through CRAFFT, we are committed to helping families create and sustain a family/community environment that strengthens family relationships to promote the continued growth and development of healthy, productive children, families, and community.

Mission Statement

This family-focused training program provides families with educational and informational networks that promote their effectiveness in sustaining their families, and raising and parenting healthy and productive children.

CRAFFT promotes the safety, permanency, and well-being of children by training resource, adoptive, and foster families and by providing technical assistance and support to local departments of social services in their concerted efforts to meet the needs of children in the child welfare system. The goals of CRAFFT are:

• To develop and implement, by designated areas, a uniform system of state-guided training and technical assistance for local departments of social services (LDSS), as they deliver pre- and in-service training to their resource, adoptive, and foster families (collectively referred to as resource families).
• To develop a core pre- and in-service training curriculum that is consistent throughout the state in both content and minimum requirements.
• To develop a training curriculum that allows for some variation area and/or local demographic differences and needs.
• To develop consistent and valid evaluation tools and to include needs assessment processes and post-training evaluations that will effectively target training needs and training benefits. These tools must also reflect the outcomes that the training program is intended to produce.
• To provide an annual training event for resource parents, to be presented in all five designated areas of the state.

The CRAFFT program is currently conducting pilot trainings using the PRIDE curriculum. In addition, various areas of the state are hosting CRAFFT Roundtables, designed to educate people on a variety of topics pertaining to CRAFFT, PRIDE, resource parenting, and child welfare as a whole.

For more information:

• Western Region CRAFFT Coordinator
  Rhonda Roop
  540-320-6236
  rroop7@radford.edu
• Piedmont Region CRAFFT Coordinator
  Susan Taylor
  804-347-4095
  staylor22@radford.edu
  

Regional Coordinators