Family training
Oklahoma PRIDE/Bridge Concept
In OK PRIDE, a Bridge Resource Family is a family willing to be whatever the child needs:
- Provide temporary care, love and nurturance to the child and serve as a mentor actively helping the parent improve their ability to safely care for their children. (This definition covers kinship and foster families.) Stay connected and assist in the transition to reunification, legal guardianship or adoption to another family, and/or
- Serve as the legal guardian for the child while maintaining a childs connection to kin, culture and community. (Sometimes the court places legal custody with individuals. These individuals must still help that child maintain important connections.) and /or
- Adopt the child while maintaining a childs connection to kin, culture and community.
- Think of a Bridge Resource Family as one who helps a child maintain connections as they go from one place to another, OKDHA believes that Bridge families. Working together with the childs birth family, provides better quality services for children and youth in the child welfare system.
Three different roles Bridge Resource Families can play:
- Kinship families
- Foster families
- Adoptive families
