This curriculum emphasizes the role of the parent as a member of a professional team who works in partnership with DHHS and other service providers. Parenting skills are identified and practiced; prior experiences, knowledge, and skills are used as a basis for building strengths to meet the new challenge of parenting a child with special needs.

This curriculum asks the participant to understand the child and his/her development from the child's point of view. It does not prescribe an ideology or a set of rules and it does not look at the child as a clinical social problem. Rather, the emotional experience of the child who has been abused, neglected, or removed from his/her family is emphasized; the participant is encouraged to take a humanistic yet realistic look at the child as a human being.

By focusing on the process of identifying patterns and understanding the roots of behavior, this introductory curriculum asks adoptive and foster parents to assess and plan their own learning, to think of themselves as learners engaged in the task of developing their own knowledge and skills as parents. Reflective Practice as a means of understanding and building on their own experiences for future learning is woven throughout the curriculum.