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What Is Foster and Adoptive Parent Training Class PATH?

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Question: What Is Foster and Adoptive Parent Training Class PATH?

PATH is another training program used by a few states to help prepare individuals and families to become foster and adoptive parents.

Answer:

PATH stands for Parents as Tender Healers and was first published in May 1997. It is another program used by a few states to prepare and educate families that are interested in providing foster care or in becoming adoptive homes to children within the foster care system.

Parents as Tender Healers (PATH) was developed to be a video based training that could be presented in eight, three hour sessions. The curriculum was created to train prospective foster, kinship, and adoptive parents. It is intended to help those interested in foster care or adoption to make a final decision as to whether or not providing foster care or an adoptive home to a child in need is an appropriate choice for them and their families.

Families that participate in the PATH program are also expected to do weekly homework to be competed between sessions.

Subjects Covered within the PATH Curriculum Include:

  • The difference between resource, or foster and adoptive families, and how they are different than birth families.
  • Understanding the behaviors of children within the foster care system and how those behaviors develop over time.
  • The roles of the birth family, the legal system, and the resource family.
  • The traits and attributes of successful foster families.
  • Understanding abuse and neglect and abuse and neglect can impact the emotional well being of children. Explore the behaviors that go along with the years of abuse and neglect and how those develop.


  • Understanding trauma and emotional attachment and the impact both have on children.
  • Helping a child transition into a new home as well as continue to transition from foster home to foster home or back to birth home or into an adoptive placement. How to look at the strengths and needs of each new placement and help make a plan for the child's moves.
  • Helping children form healthy attachments.
  • Learning parenting skills needed to help manage the behaviors of children in care.
  • A final panel discussion will also be included within the training sessions that will feature experienced foster and adoptive parents as well as children who have grown-up in the system.

PATH, or Parents as Tender Healers, is the designated training for both the state of Mississippi as well as the state of Tennessee. The state of Virginia takes a multi curriculum approach and uses MAPP, Parent Resources for Information, Development, and Education (PRIDE), and PATH to educate their foster parents.

If you are interested in using PATH as a part of of your foster or adoptive training program, contact:
National Resource Center for Adoption
At Spaulding for Children at nrc@nrcadoption.org for more information on purchasing the training program.
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