Supported Virtual Family Time Program well-received and still available

The one-hour Supported Virtual Family Time (SVFT) E-Learning was developed as a response to COVID-19. The program provides online training, guidance, and resources to prepare Family Time supervisors to support parents and caregivers and facilitate positive remote visits between parents and their children in out-of-home care.

To date, 136 individuals have completed the training. The Supportive Virtual Family Time training has been very well received by participants. As one participant wrote: “Watching the example of the meeting between foster parent and biological dad was helpful to get an idea of my role in it and how that would look.”

Supportive Virtual Family Time program creates structure, guidance, and training for those supervising virtual parent-child visits, with the goal of helping them facilitate positive remote supervised visits between parents and their children in out-of-home care. The program and training is geared toward both private agency supervised visitation providers as well as child welfare caseworkers who will be supervising these virtual visits.

The components of the Supportive Virtual Family Time Program include structure, guidance and suggested scripts for:

1. A virtual meeting with the parent(s) before virtual family time takes place (30 minutes)
2. A virtual meeting with the foster or relative caregiver(s) before virtual family time takes place (30 minutes)
3. A family time partnership meeting between the parent(s), foster/relative caregiver(s) before virtual family time takes place (1 hour)
4. A debriefing with the parent(s) and the foster/relative caregiver(s) after the virtual family time takes place (15 minutes for each or 30 minutes together)

To summarize, the total amount of time for a family time/visit supervisor to do this work includes:

• One hour of on-line training (including a brief feedback survey)
• Up to 2.5 hours for each set of individual and joint parent(s)/caregiver(s) meetings

The Supportive Virtual Family Time Program can be accessed here.

Please note that you will need to register for the course to get access to the free program guide and training. Don’t worry about any questions in the registration process that the don’t apply to your situation.

We hope you find the program helpful. We welcome your feedback and hope hope you will help us by completing the brief survey at the end of the training.