Expanding Adoption Competency Across Systems
Expanding Adoption Competency Across Systems
Published on:
Dec 14, 2025
Category
For Professionals
Most graduate programs don’t teach the specialized skills needed to support families formed through adoption, foster care, or kinship arrangements. NTI is a great place to start and can be a valuable resource at every stage of the adoption-competent journey. The National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative (NTI) and the School-Based Mental Health Training (NTI-Ed) are free, state-of-the-art, web-based trainings designed to equip professionals across child welfare, mental health, and education systems. These trainings, along with coaching to move knowledge into practice, provide practical, adoption-competent strategies and tools to support the permanency of children and their foster, kinship, and adoptive families.
NTI enhances the skills of child welfare and mental health providers, preparing them to address trauma, loss, identity, and the complex dynamics that impact families. Our school-based training, NTI-Ed, extends this expertise into educational settings, helping educators understand how these experiences affect learning, behavior, and relationships, so they can respond with compassion and intentional strategies.
NTI Training Implementation Teams Help Systems, Organizations, and Schools Use Best Practices
Through implementation support, our specialists help systems, organizations, and schools incorporate these practices into their daily work. They assist with planning, modeling, and integrating the training into existing structures, serving as strategic partners in the transition from awareness to action. This includes providing customized, developing site-specific implementation plans, facilitating coaching, tailoring training to organizational needs, offering virtual and in-person presentations, and supplying specialized outreach and marketing tools to strengthen engagement.
Together, these free trainings create aligned, consistent support across systems, ensuring children, youth, and families receive coordinated and competent care. Both trainings are approved by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC) for free continuing education credits.
NTI News:
The Revised NTI Training for Mental Health Professionals Launched in November!
When we began working with state systems and organizations to implement the NTI Training – we were often asked by leadership if the training would be updated periodically. We are happy to say the answer is YES. We launched the Newly Revised NTI Training for Mental Health Professionals on November 20, 2025. A lot has happened since NTI was created seven years ago, and this revision has been more than a year in the making. We listened to feedback from users and individuals with lived experience and expertise, and we are excited for this launch!
It’s the Same Great Training – but Even Better!
Content improvements that make NTI even more practice-changing and skill-enhancing include:
- Expanded program directory of interventions and adjunct therapies
- A comprehensive assessment tool and framework for assessing through a new lens
- Enhanced content for supporting kinship families
- Greater focus on brain-based approaches to therapeutic parenting
- New content for supporting and managing challenging behaviors including anger and aggression, self-harming, and sexual acting out behaviors
- And more…
This Update Provides a Balanced Perspective on Youth Experiencing Foster Care, Adoption, and Kinship Care + Additional Improvements Including:
- New video clips & updated resources
- Shorter length
- More strengths-based language
- Better accessibility for activities
- Playback speed control (a game-changer for those who want narration to go faster).
- Compliance with all federal Executive Orders
Where Can You Access NTI Training?
If you’re a mental health professional who’s been longing for an opening in your schedule to take this free, online training, now is the time! The revised training became available on November 20, 2025 on the C.A.S.E. Institute Learning Management System (LMS).
Our NTI Team will reach out to all sites hosting NTI to provide access to the revised training files and materials. If you are not currently a host site but would like to have access to these files or need implementation advice and support, please contact us!
What about the Training for Child Welfare Professionals and Supervisors?
We’re currently working on revising this training based on feedback from our reviewers and training participants and plan to launch the revised training in April 2026. Stay tuned for more information!
Connect with the NTI Team: please drop us an email anytime!
