A Different Kind of Pride

On Friday, September 25, Concord University hosted the Pride Retreat for foster and adoptive care training in the Student Center’s State Room. The event was organized and led in part by Gail Murano, the Training Coordinator of Concord’s Division of Social Services. 

The Pride Retreat, sponsored and facilitated by Concord since 1998-1999, serves as an outlet for the state’s home finders and adoptive agencies to troubleshoot any issues regarding the path to fostering children in West Virginia. As a quarterly event, the Retreat is also an organized area where all involved parties can plan and guide the future of adopting and fostering children. 

The campus has had a longstanding impact on the community’s training for interested foster parents, “Concord actually piloted the Pride Training,” says Murano, “and since then we’ve had some expansions. What began as Level 1 training, which is pre-service training, and then we added Level 2 and Level 3 training in our region.” Since the pilot of the Pride Retreat, the state has allowed the expansion of the Pride Training and adopted Level 1 training as mandatory for new foster parents. Within the last six years, West Virginia has again allowed the training to expand by making Levels 2 and 3 necessary for incoming foster parents. 

The grants allow expansion have requirements for the sake of the organization. “Part of the grant requirements is that we meet several times a year. We have four retreats per year, usually quarterly, and during these retreats we meet with state home finding supervisors, agency representatives, the trainers, and Concord’s faculty and staff,” Murano informs. 

As a group, the Pride Retreat works toward helping the state’s foster program. “For example, last year the state said that they needed help recruiting families. They wanted to know if there was anything we could do to help, and so we created a publicity campaign.” Murano goes on to explain that through this campaign, the Pride Retreat created wvcares4kids.com, a website with equal representation of West Virginia’s foster agencies. The webpage offers plenty of information regarding the steps to becoming a foster parent, myths and realities about foster care, inspirational stories, and even a FAQ section. 

The meeting touched on upcoming changes in state policies, including those that would shorten the Pride Trainings to only 21 hours total. Many regions plan on condensing the nine trainings into a total of five, and the state has begun to direct new inquiries about foster parenting to Mission West Virginia, Inc. Even further into the future, the state is considering creating online trainings, though while tested, have shown to be more time consuming than the scheduled meetings. The Pride Retreat maintains that these changes are still in the preliminary phases and may take years to be completely active. 

The website missionwv.org directs interested parents to the appropriate paperwork and offers an inquiry path that includes every agency, allowing families to choose the adoption agency that best suits their individual needs. 

On the agenda of things decided during the Pride Retreat, the website will be updated to designate kinship foster parents to the DHHR and traditional foster interest to the individual agencies. In the near future, individual adoptive agencies are considering setting up informative tables on the ground floor of the Student Center to spread information and garter interest. Children’s Home Society is also looking into the possibility of student internships and volunteers, to provide a hands-on learning experience for Concord’s social work students. 

The next Pride Retreat has been scheduled for December 18 at 11:30 AM, in Concord University’s Stateroom. For more information regarding fostering children and assisting the foster homes, the Concord community is welcome to look into wvcares4kids.com.