Family Agency Collaborative Training Team (FACTT)
Current Mission:
The Mission of the Family Agency Collaborative Training Team is to support training partners who believed in the need to provide a unified effort to support family trainer partners in the state of North Carolina.
Current Goals:
The CFFACE Family Trainer Coordinator continued to be involved with family trainer recruitment efforts with an emphasis on the development of recruitment materials, family trainer protocols, and professional development for family trainers. This initiative is primarily supported through co-sponsorship with North Carolina Families United (a state-wide family advocacy agency) of the state-wide FACTT Committee. This group was formed in 2007 by training partners who believed in the need to provide a unified effort to support family trainer partners in the state of North Carolina.
Partners include CFFACE, NC Families United, NC Department of Public Instruction, NC Foster and Adoptive Parent Association, the NC State Collaborative for Children and Families, NC-DSS, Wake County Human Services, UNC-Greensboro Center for Youth, Family and Community Partnerships, and the North Carolina Division of Public Health. The group identified the following four goals as the primary focus of work our work together:
To provide leadership in the development of shared documents regarding family trainer support and opportunities.
To support efforts to identify and seek funding to develop supportive networks for family trainer professional development.
To identify and partner in opportunities to provide train the trainer and trainer skills events for family trainers.
To support recruitment efforts for family trainers.
In 2008-2009, the FACTT committee has supported the development of recruitment and family trainer support materials; the development of a training partnership curriculum; and has offered two professional development events for family and agency trainers. Partnership planning materials developed by NC-DSS Learning Support Development Team (LSDT) group are included in both the family trainer support materials and the partnership training. This offers more universal access to partnership materials already supported and promoted by DSS and will provide shared language for future agency-family trainer partnerships.
Co-Training Heart to Heart, a training partnership curriculum was developed by the FACTT committee and piloted in January 2008 to 28 participants. The training, sponsored by Public Health, included 17 family partners, 1 CFFACE representative, 9 members of public health and 1 student intern. The majority of participants rated this event as “informative”, “helpful” and “important”. Additional comments included:
“Would love to have a two day training or retreat to discuss more in depths the learning styles discussed.”
“Fun and effective learning experience. Hopefully, this can inspire many training groups. Great workshop! Glad I could be a part of it!”
The FACTT committee continues to work on revisions to this curriculum and hopes to make it available to those around the state seeking to develop training partnerships between agency and family trainers. A primary revision includes the need to adjust the “learning styles” index to include one that does not require an extensive train the trainer. A FACTT training retreat in June 2009, offered training and exploration of “social styles” as an alternative to learning styles. This retreat included participation by the majority of the CFFACE training staff and five family trainers. While the primary focus of the retreat was to explore social styles in relation to the Heart to Heart curriculum, it also provided excellent trainer development and partnership between CFFACE staff and family trainers.
“It’s A FACTT!”
Families and Agencies training together
Collaborating as active partners
Speaking the same language and aiming for the same goals
REALLY?! What could be better?!
The Family Agency Collaborative Training Team (FACTT) is a group of families, young adults and professionals who work hard to support one another to become better trainers, develop and collect great training ideas and grow future youth, family and professional training partners.
This work is co-sponsored by North Carolina Families United, a state-wide family advocacy agency, and the NCSU Center for Family and Community Engagement.
Other partners include:
NC Department of Public Instruction
NC Foster and Adoptive Parent Association
NC State Collaborative for Children and Families
NC Department of Social Services
Wake County Human Services
UNC-Greensboro Center for Youth, Family and Community Partnerships
NC Division of Public Health
So what work has been going on? In 2008-2009 the FACTT Committee helped develop planning tools for family professional partnership trainings, revised and piloted a co-training curriculum, Co-Training Heart 2 Heart, and offered two very well-received professional development events for family and agency trainers.
What is next? Strategic Planning, more curriculum success, increasing partnerships and growing the youth voice are important activities for the coming year.