Steps in the Process

1. Select your training. Although any training you use will require some adaptation depending on whom you are training, the core knowledge, skills, and supports needed to embed the Strengthening Families protective factors in their programs will remain the same. Your goal is to provide interactive activities and discussions that enhance participants' understanding of the protective factors and how they can build each protective factor into their daily contact with families. The starting point for this exploration is to visit CSSP’s training information, which provides lists of available trainings. Some of our pilot sites found the trainings offered through Stronger Together Curriculum and the Nurturing Parent Curriculum very useful to their UWSF training.
    

Keys to Success

• Your participants need to walk away with a clear definition of what it means to be a Strengthening Families program.
• Choose a variety of hands-on activities and tasks that engage your participants. Include games, work plans (correlate specific UW agency work w/specific factors/implementation of work plans/costs), and brainstorming sheets.

2. Recruit participants. Training in UWSF is based on developing strong relationships between partners, service providers, childcare providers, community members, and parents. When you are recruiting participants for your training, stress that UWSF recognizes that the family is the constant in the child's life and by strengthening families we can help prevent and reduce child abuse and neglect and in turn strengthen our communities. Be upfront about the time commitments involved in UWSF training.

Keys to Success

• Stay open to the unexpected opportunities; you never know when a potential participant might be recruited.
• Require programs that work with your local United Way to have a team, not just a single person, trained in Strengthening Families.
• Our pilot sites found that there should be a minimum of 12-15 hours of training.

3. Conduct the training session. A successful training will actively engage, motivate, and challenge your participants. As you are presenting materials and concepts you should be helping participants make connections between the UWSF content and their work and life experience. Stress personal leadership skills, goal-setting and identification of personal resources. Make sure that you use active listening and consistently work to remove barriers to effective communication.

Keys to Success

• Use the strengths of all your participants to make your training a success.
• Participants should also explore valuable insights about communicating effectively with parents.
• Explore assumptions, fears, and hopes for working collaboratively.
• Present the benefits to children and families when professionals work together.

4. Ongoing support. Just as with the orientation sessions, the end of the training cannot be the end of the relationship. Your goal here is to continue to provide one-on-one technical support to your participants. Consider reconvening participants from the trainings to discuss progress, success, and hurdles. This can give you a chance to offer additional insight and assistance.

Keys to Success

• Help participants celebrate success, build on the energy created during the training, establish learning networks, establishing collaborative projects, restructuring their allocation process), or keep in touch in other ways.
• UWSF work continues in the strategies you implement, and allows you to continually to expand your audience into a growing network of people committed to the principles of Strengthening Families.