Our trainings are aimed at educating and equipping faith communities, families and individuals to care for foster or adoptive children. We provide leaders course materials, event supplies, and guides. Sign up and read more about our trainings below.
Cultivate Connection Course
Nine 2-hour Sessions
This course introduces practices and strategies for parents, grandparents, teachers, and all who care for children of all ages. The information covered is rooted in research on brain-based caregiving, attachment, trauma, and more. Participants will have space to breathe, find hope, and feel more empowered to meet daily challenges. Click below to find out more or register for our Fall 2024 Connection Course beginning October 6.
Cost – Participant Guide (required) - $50 for digital download only; $70 for a spiral bound guide and digital download.
The best places that can demonstrate love are communities of faith, regardless of which faith tradition you follow. However, knowing the most effective ways to support them can feel overwhelming. You may have questions around how to build relationships, communicate in love and understand trauma. This can stop you from embracing these children and helping them grow spiritually. However, without strong support, children are left to navigate life on their own, increasing their risk of becoming victims of abuse, facing unplanned pregnancies, suffering from addictions, and experiencing homelessness.
Since 2013, Cultivating Families has been equipping communities of faith to care for foster care and adopted children. Through utilizing our training courses, resources and support activities, you can learn to embrace foster and adoptive families easily and help them through their challenges.
The first step to receiving training is simply to schedule a consultation below!
Seeing children lose hope in finding a family who truly loves them as they are is heartbreaking. Without a mother to wipe their tears after a fall, or a father to confide in on the drive to school - these children feel lonely. They become numb to their desire for familial love.
You want to show these children love, but taking care of them can be a challenge you’re not sure you’re prepared for. It is hard to know all the logistics of bringing a child into your home and how to best handle their unique situations.
Our Decisions Course will help you have a realistic expectation and understanding of what will be required of you if you are considering adopting or fostering a child. This course covers all forms of adoption and will help you decide if fostering or adopting is right for you. The course not only prepares you to welcome a child into your home, it also helps you understand other opportunities to help these children if you decide not to adopt a child or bring a child in foster care into your home.
This training is an introduction to foster care and all types of adoption. It is designed for all who want to help children, whether planning to bring a child into your home or helping others that do, everyone can help.
This 1.5 hour event is one of the key entry points for our other programs and is the first step before signing up for Cultivating Families Decision Course. We provide an informative, myth-busting look at what foster care is, while describing the many types of adoption and translating the language and terminology within this world into simple terms.
Both foster care and adoption can be an isolating experience – our support group is for foster parents, adoptive parents, and relatives that take in a loved one’s child. The format provides a sense of belonging to all parties involved.
Our group tool-kit makes it simple for a staff person or volunteer to host a monthly meeting. However, the foster/adoptive family dynamic came to be, there are unique rewards and challenges that only foster, adoptive, and kinship parents face. The potential for emotional, intellectual, and physical stress can become very high and every bit of research shows that support systems (both formal and informal) can have a beneficial influence on the entire family.
Cultivating Connection Curriculum, formerly Empowered to Connect (ETC)
Who: Cultivating Connection training, formerly ETC, will be designed for all who spend time with children, including future and current foster care and adoptive families, relatives, teachers, childcare workers, pastors, and children’s program volunteers. Courses will be led by trained Cultivating Connection Facilitator.
What: Check back soon for more details on the updated curriculum and dates for future trainings.