Creating A Family

In 2020, Creating a Family worked to create, pilot and test the new Interactive Training & Support for Foster/Adoptive/Kinship Families Subscription Service. Ten curricula were developed in 2020 and offered to the public in 2021. During 2021 an additional 10 curricula were developed. In 2022, 5 more curricula were developed. The Interactive Training & Support Curricula provides resources and wraparound services with the goal of increasing the number of parent support groups available to families by making it easier to facilitate and maintain high-quality groups where parents develop social connections, reduce stress, and feel more confident in parenting children exposed to trauma. Each curriculum includes a video, facilitator guide, and handouts. The wraparound subscription service has initial facilitator training for online or in-person groups, access to participant evaluations, and access to a curriculum library that includes 25 topics for foster, adoptive, and kinship parents. During 2022, 280 curricula were utilized by 25 organizations.

As a result of our Grandparent Support Kit program in 2021, Creating a Family conducted listening sessions with kinship caregivers. In response to the identified need for kinship families to understand their legal permanency options, Creating a Family developed the Legal Options for Kinship Caregivers in North Carolina website (NCKinshipFamilies.org) in 2022. The website helps kinship caregivers explore their legal options, whether working with child welfare or caring for children outside the child welfare system. The mobile-friendly multimedia website includes videos with experts explaining the various options, lived-experience videos of North Carolina kinship caregivers, animated tips videos, audio conversations, and downloadable tip sheets and templates. Guided by a kinship advisory committee, the website explores legal options for informal agreements, power of attorney, becoming a licensed kinship foster parent, custody, guardianship, and adoption. The website also offers links and information if the caregiver needs to find an attorney and additional resources.

In 2022, Creating a Family created and piloted four Prenatal Exposure Trainings. These trainings were designed to help participants recognize children who may have been impacted by prenatal exposure to alcohol and drugs and train them on best practices for working with these children and youth to help them thrive. The four trainings were focused on the following groups: * K-8 teachers * Daycare/Preschool Staff * Afterschool Staff * Foster, Adoptive, and Kinship Parents The trainings were conducted over three sessions, each lasting 1.5 hours. We created a video for each session of the four trainings-so, in total, 12 videos. The videos included embedded video interviews with experts from UNC's Knowles Center for Alcohol Studies, Duke University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, the Fullerton Genetics Center, and foster parents with lived experience raising children with prenatal substance exposure. We also embedded animated videos that we created to help explain and animate complex concepts. Each session was led by our staff facilitator and included extensive group participation. The trainings were designed to be utilized either in-person or online, and we piloted the training with both in-person and online groups. We created a digital and print participant handbook to accompany each of the four trainings. Parents and teachers received 5 hours of continuing education credit for their participation. We worked with the different accrediting bodies to make sure that the trainings complied with their standards. We ran trainings for 6 different organizations and trained a total of 277 participants. Additionally, we worked with an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at NC State University, to run an evidence-based study to evaluate the effectiveness of this training.

The Creating a Family website, www.CreatingaFamily.org is the focal point of our organization. Our mission is to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them in raising children exposed to trauma, including prenatal exposure, by creating expert-based and trauma-informed resources and training for parents and professionals. Our website is where we house the resources and trainings we create. In 2022, Creating a Family averaged 78,000+ page views monthly. There is no charge for the vast majority of resources provided on the site.

Another invaluable program service is the Creating a Family podcast. This free, weekly, one-hour production, hosted by Executive Director, Dawn Davenport, covers topics in the fields of adoption, foster care and kinship care with guests that are specialists in their respective fields. There were 224,500 listens during 2022 and over 2.75 million listens since the podcast's inception.

Creating a Family provides online courses for adoptive, foster, and kinship parents and continuing education courses for social workers in the child welfare field. We have 75+ parent courses for pre-adoptive, in-service foster, and post-adoption families. Each course is 1 hour and comes with a Certificate of Completion. Our courses align with the federal requirements for international adoption and various state-specific pre-adoption education requirements. Our courses address topics relevant to adoptive, foster, and kinship families. We also offer 18 courses accredited by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) to offer continuing education (CE) credit for social workers. In 2022, more than 27,700 courses were enrolled.

Creating a Family reaches out to individuals through its weekly adoption, foster care, and kinship newsletter to 5,300 subscribers and through its broad exposure to the social networks that it maintains on Facebook (9,200+ followers and over 10,000 followers of the Support Group page), Twitter (6,500+) and Pinterest (6,400+) followers. Creating a Family also reaches out to adoption and foster professionals through its weekly newsletter to 2,100 subscribers and through LinkedIn (3,290 followers for the Executive Director Dawn and 1,121 followers for the Creating a Family account).