Family Resource & Training Center
For more than three decades, FRTC has worked with public agencies, community partners, families, professionals, students and technology partners to respond to changing needs in child welfare and human services.
Our work often begins with a practical challenge: a system needs a different approach, a program is not meeting current needs, or existing tools cannot fully support the work. FRTC helps turn those challenges into practical solutions through program development, training, implementation, technology, evaluation, community partnership and applied learning.
Where practice meets innovation
Some of FRTC’s most visible innovation has grown directly from day-to-day program needs. These partnerships show how direct practice can identify gaps, shape technology and influence tools that continue to evolve.
FRTC's work with True Harbor began with a specific placement challenge. Our teams needed a better way to identify foster families whose location, availability and capabilities aligned with the needs of a child entering placement.
That initial placement-matching work has grown into multiple True Harbor environments supporting different areas of FRTC operations. Each reflects a different program need while using shared technology to improve tracking, coordination and visibility across the work.
The original placement work has evolved into a more robust system used by Fostering Idaho Partnerships to support foster family recruitment, retention and ongoing support.
FRTC is transitioning its child welfare workforce trainers into a dedicated True Harbor environment designed around new-worker learning, progress and support.
FRTC also uses True Harbor internally to support staff operations and professional development across programs.
FRTC also partnered with True Harbor to create a workflow for connecting families with community partners and tracking support requests.
The system can be used as a standalone enviorment to identify and match needs to resources.
Before True Harbor, FRTC used SharePoint to manage placement information. SharePoint limited collaboration with outside partners and could not provide the matching functionality the placement team needed. FRTC began working with developer Eric Saupe with Placing Hope on a system that could compare child-specific placement needs with foster-family profiles and geography. That original solution became the foundation for a much broader technology partnership.
FRTC partners with Lights, Camera, Family to strengthen child-specific recruitment and placement work through secure, human-centered video profiles for children and families.
The platform supports guided video creation, trauma-informed prompts, controlled sharing, organizational workflows and the use of child and family profiles in recruitment, permanency, placement and kinship work.
FRTC’s experience with child-specific recruitment and video-based recruitment helped identify the need for a more secure and practice-integrated approach to video in child welfare work.
From direct practice to next steps
FRTC programs do more than provide services. They create opportunities to learn from implementation, identify gaps and help develop the next generation of tools and approaches.
FRTC coordinated and supported placement searches for children in foster care, working with foster families and Idaho child welfare staff to identify compatible placement options.
SharePoint limited outside collaboration, information capture and the ability to compare child-specific needs with family characteristics.
FRTC worked with Eric Saupe with Placing Hope to develop tools that could compare child-specific needs with foster-family profiles and geography.
The original placement solution grew into a broader child welfare technology platform and an ongoing development partnership.
FRTC operated a statewide child-specific recruitment program using youth profiles, digital outreach, photography, video and other media to help connect youth waiting for permanency with prospective adoptive families.
Over ten years, Idaho Wednesday’s Child served 334 youth, generated more than 4,000 inquiries and documented 184 youth achieving permanency while receiving media recruitment efforts.
FRTC partnered with The REEL Hope Project to expand the use of child-centered video storytelling in Idaho adoption recruitment and learn from a broader multi-state approach.
As digital risk increased, Idaho needed a model that gave agencies more control over who could view youth videos, how videos were shared and how youth identity could be better protected.
FRTC now works with Lights, Camera, Family around secure video-profile tools designed for recruitment, placement, kinship and permanency work.
A pattern across FRTC’s work
FRTC has repeatedly been asked to step into areas where agencies or systems identified a gap, a changing expectation or a need for a different approach. The programs vary, but the pattern has stayed remarkably consistent.
Case study
Changes in Idaho’s child welfare system created a need to reassess how prospective foster parents were prepared for licensing. FRTC helped turn that transition into an operational statewide training system.
A state performance improvement process prompted outside review of foster parent recruitment and licensing practices. The review identified the need for an updated preservice curriculum and stronger documentation of training delivery and fidelity.
Idaho selected the National Training and Development Curriculum for Foster and Adoptive Parents as the new preservice model.
Built through decades of child welfare partnership
FRTC’s roots reach back to 1993, when Eastern Washington University partnered with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare to connect university learning with direct child welfare practice.
Over time, that work expanded across workforce development, caregiver training, foster and adoptive family recruitment, retention and mentoring, placement, permanency, family engagement, youth services, community partnerships, interstate placement, evaluation, technology and systems improvement.
Selected programs & initiatives
These programs matter not simply because they happened in the past, but because they built expertise, relationships and systems knowledge that continue to inform FRTC’s work today.
Coordinated and supported placement searches for children in foster care, helping identify foster families whose circumstances, abilities and availability aligned with a child’s placement needs.
Connection forward: helped identify the need that contributed to True Harbor.
Provided comprehensive child-specific recruitment services for youth in foster care seeking permanency through adoption or guardianship, including media campaigns and intensive recruitment approaches.
FRTC implemented the Wendy’s Wonderful Kids model to support intensive recruitment and permanency efforts for youth awaiting adoptive families.
Need before publication: add FRTC-specific history, dates and outcomes.
Supported family-centered planning by bringing families, supporters and agency partners together through a structured process designed to help families create realistic, workable plans.
Partnered with Washington State to recruit and support foster parents and relative caregivers across Eastern Washington through regional recruitment, mentoring, first-placement support and resource connection.
Connected churches, businesses and individuals with opportunities to support the foster care community through recruitment, awareness, volunteerism, donations and community partnership.
Supported Idaho’s Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children work through home studies and courtesy case supervision, with service across multiple Idaho regions.
Provided life-skills training and case-management support for current and former youth involved in foster care as they prepared for greater independence.
Historical program materials document approximately 300 youth served.
Delivered statewide education, training and support opportunities for foster and kinship caregivers, including preservice training, trauma-informed learning and ongoing support.
Learning from the work
FRTC’s role within Eastern Washington University creates opportunities to connect real-world programs with student learning, evaluation and program improvement.
One example came through the Independent Living program, where a student completed a program evaluation with mentorship and support from FRTC.
Training, convening & professional learning
FRTC has a long history of creating learning environments that bring caregivers, child welfare professionals, trainers, community organizations and other partners into the same space. That work has included statewide conferences, professional-development events, virtual learning and multi-site simulcasts.
Beginning in 2002, FRTC helped coordinate a long-running statewide conference series designed to bring foster and kinship caregivers, adoptive families, child welfare professionals and community partners together for learning, connection and resource sharing.
The conference evolved over time and was eventually rebranded as the Idaho Foster Care Conference. Rather than one central event, the conference model is delivered across Idaho through separate North, West and East Hub events.
Conferences are coordinated separately in North, West and East Idaho, allowing families and professionals to participate closer to their communities.
FRTC has delivered the conference in person and virtually, including a live online model during the COVID period and additional pre- and post-conference learning.
Public and partner organizations are invited to participate as vendors at no cost, helping families and professionals build direct connections with community resources and supports.
Historical conference records document a conference tradition spanning more than two decades, with themes and formats evolving alongside the needs of Idaho's foster care community.
The Idaho Foster Care Conference brings together foster parents, kinship caregivers, adoptive parents, social workers and community partners for trauma-informed learning, continuing education, networking and resource connection.
The conference is delivered as three regional events each year, one in each Idaho hub.
FRTC has hosted Hope for the Journey, formerly Empowered to Connect, for several years as a learning and connection opportunity for foster, kinship and adoptive families, social workers and members of the public.
When the national event was delivered as a live simulcast, FRTC coordinated community viewing locations across Idaho. In some years, as many as 11 local sites participated at the same time, creating conference-style experiences in churches and community spaces while sharing the same national content.
FRTC also invited community organizations and partner vendors at no cost so participants could connect with local resources alongside the training.
FRTC participates in and periodically hosts the West Coast Child Welfare Training Conference, a professional-development gathering focused on the people who design, deliver and support learning within child welfare and social service systems.
Participants include trainers, coaches, curriculum designers, instructional designers, evaluators and organizational leaders. FRTC has also supported virtual delivery of the conference.
FRTC's convening work reflects broader experience in learning design and implementation. Across programs, the Center has supported in-person, virtual, hybrid and simulcast learning; curriculum and instructional design; facilitation; technical assistance; conference administration; and community-resource connection.
What connects the work
FRTC’s individual programs change as systems, communities and expectations change. What continues is the approach: listen to the need, understand the system, build with partners, implement in practice and keep learning from the work.