About Our Programs
Each year, child welfare professionals in New Jersey who work with the Division of Child Protection and Permanency (CP&P) are required to participate in 40 hours of ongoing training and professional development to enhance their practice with children and families throughout the state. The New Jersey Child Welfare Training Partnership (NJCWTP) at the Institute for Families within Rutgers School of Social Work has been tasked with developing, coordinating, and delivering this training to over 6,000 caseworkers every year.
Since the Partnership began in 2007, these courses have operated with an in-person, instructor-led training model allowing workers to network and collaborate with their peers. In order to successfully bring these course offerings to workers around the state, the Partnership has carefully screened, selected, and nurtured a pool of nearly 90 per diem trainers who have worked passionately to facilitate over 175 course titles and dramatically shift case practice in New Jersey into the 21st century. Because of the tremendous success of this training model, the Institute for Families last year brought in a new training program called Grow NJ Kids Training Services—designed to coordinate, deliver, and evaluate training that helps build the knowledge and skills required of child care professionals who are part of Grow NJ Kids, New Jersey’s initiative to raise the quality of early care and education for children from birth through preschool. Built on the model that allowed NJCWTP to make such an impact, Grow NJ Kids has also begun building a local pool of per diem trainers to meet the professional development needs of providers—including directors, teachers, assistant teachers, aides, and support staff. |
The WorkshopIn this 2017 NSDTA workshop, participants learned about the competencies of the consultant trainer role, recruitment strategies, interview tips, the onboarding and orientation process, and continuous coaching and quality improvement methods that have allowed the Institute for Families to build a model cohort of consultant human services training professionals.
A newly designed website for building collaboration and access to resources for trainers was demonstrated in the workshop, along with a sample video used during new trainer orientation. Finally, resources introduced in the training included a recruitment process workflow, our instructor application and competencies, and an online "pre-boarding" course platform. |
Our GoalOur goal for this website is to offer workshop participants the opportunity to continue conversations began at the 2017 NSDTA Annual Conference in Savannah, Georgia.
We invite you to connect and collaborate with your peers, and explore the resources we've made available through this site to help develop your own consultant trainer program. Feel free to reach out to our team for more information about the work we're doing in New Jersey. |