NTI is Practice Changing!

Completers of the NTI Training know that it is more than “just training!”

It changes how you think about the children and families you serve. It also provides you with skills and strategies to change how you interact with and support children and families. That, of course, is our goal – to change your practice. We’ll highlight specific ways that NTI is Practice-Changing and also focus on how it is different from other training you encounter. These examples are written with a particular focus on the role of mental health professionals but can apply as well to professionals in child welfare or educational systems.

How is NTI Practice-Changing?

Many of the evidence-based models designed to support work with children who have experienced trauma and attachment challenges are included in the NTI Training. However, none of these models focus on the mental health and developmental challenges of children, youth and young adults who have experienced foster care, kinship care, adoption and guardianship. NTI does! It is designed to provide you with the foundational understanding and the nuanced perspective you need to effectively support youth and families with these life experiences.

NTI is not just complementary to evidence-based treatment models. It is an enhancement – providing a holistic perspective on the unique needs of this population, challenging assumptions about the experiences of foster, adoptive, and kinship families. It focuses on how to most effectively support them.  Here is an example…

NTI prepares clinicians to help youth process ambiguous loss and disenfranchised grief, which is essential to prepare for permanency with a new family.

Recognizing that loss and grief are at the core of every foster care, adoption or kinship placement is critical to adoption-competent support. Children and youth have a right to know what happened to them, a right to know their story, and the reasons they were not raised in their family of origin. Whether placed at birth or as an older child, children and youth experience ambiguous loss and disenfranchised grief, which must be addressed to prepare for permanence with a new family.

How is ambiguous loss different from other types of loss?

This loss lacks clarity and closure. Loved ones who are physically absent are still psychologically present in the minds of children who are removed from their birth homes. Or it can be that loved ones are physically present but psychologically absent as in the case of children whose parents are addicted to drugs or have severe mental illness and are unable to care for them. How do we help children who don’t have closure to develop healthy relationships with new families? How do we provide clarity when they don’t know or understand what happened to them or don’t believe that the current relationship will be different from their past ones?

Why is disenfranchised grief important to understand?

Disenfranchised grief is grief that is not openly acknowledged, socially supported, or publicly mourned. A great example of this is how our society focuses on the gains of adoption, such as finding a family for a child, without acknowledging the significant losses to that child.

When a parent dies, we generally acknowledge the loss, talk about the person, and provide opportunities to grieve. But when a child’s relationship with a parent or other loved ones is severed the loss is not validated or recognized by society or systems, making it very difficult for the child to process their feelings and thoughts and receive essential support. Very often we avoid talking about the loss and grief to prevent children from being sad, to help them “move on” or because we are uncomfortable with these conversations.

NTI provides clinicians with strategies, techniques, and tools to have difficult conversations with children and youth, acknowledge and explore losses and grief, help youth understand their own story, and work through their feelings and thoughts. NTI also provides professionals with techniques and tools to help parents and caregivers build the skills they need to support their children!   Feedback from a wide variety of professionals assures us that “NTI advances practice for permanency and well-being!”

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• Visit our FAQs page for more information.
• Contact an NTI Implementation and Training Specialist to share your needs.
• Access NTI Training
• Share the NTI Website with your network: www.adoptionsupport.org/nti