UNL's Center on Children, Families, and the Law has provided evaluation for the National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative (NTI) since 2022 and is thrilled to have become a host site for NTI training in 2024.
NTI was designed to help professionals better understand and address the mental health needs of children, youth, and their families moving toward or having achieved permanency through adoption or guardianship. It also seeks to improve collaboration between the child welfare and mental health service systems with shared language and aligned curricula. NTI aims to improve outcomes by infusing enhanced permanency, adoption, and mental health competency in the provision of casework and clinical practice.
To help facilitate this, NTI developed two state-of-the-art, standardized, web-based trainings to build the capacity of child welfare and mental health professionals to effectively support children, youth, and their foster, adoptive, and guardianship families.
The NTI aligned trainings provide the skills, strategies, and tools professionals need to:
- Support children in healing from trauma and loss.
- Provide parents with skills to parent more effectively.
- Collaborate effectively with child welfare and mental health professionals.
- Improve outcomes for permanency, child well-being, and family well-being and stability.