TBRI Practitioner Training Update

Our late Founder and Director, Dr. Karyn Purvis, used to say that her dream was “To help all the children of all the world.” Since our Institute’s early days, we have sought to help children. In the beginning we were able to serve a small number of children each year through The Hope Connection camps, but realized our impact could be even broader if we trained others in Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI). In 2009 we formalized our TBRI Practitioner Training with the goal of equipping the professionals who serve children and families. In the eleven years since the first TBRI Practitioner Training, we’ve trained 3,564 practitioners across forty-nine states and forty-one countries.

 

As you can see, what started as a summer camp to help a few children and families in Fort Worth, Texas, has grown exponentially. Training TBRI Practitioners from all over the world and offering easily accessible resources to anyone who wants to learn about trust-based relationships has allowed us to go wide with TBRI.  More recently, we’ve begun to think about going deep through systems change.

 

While we’re immensely grateful for these opportunities, we’ve also encountered serious challenges in meeting the demand for TBRI Practitioner Training. As our focus has broadened to changing systems, our criteria for selecting individuals to attend TBRI Practitioner Training must shift to align with that goal. As a result, we must devote the majority of TBRI Practitioner Training spots to individuals who are part of KPICD collaboratives and partnerships. While this change is necessary to strengthen communities and organizations who are implementing TBRI, we deeply regret that we are unable to open applications for the remaining 2020 TBRI Practitioner Training sessions.

 

We understand that this news is frustrating, particularly to those who have applied to TBRI Practitioner Training multiple times or planned to apply this year. Please know that we hear your frustration and are so sorry to disappoint you. The challenge of being unable to provide seats for all of the qualified applicants for TBRI Practitioner Training is deeply painful to us. While on the surface it seems like a simple issue of capacity, it is a complex problem that will require a complex solution.

 

We are taking the next few months to step back and reassess how to best meet the needs of those who wish to become TBRI Practitioners and how to best meet our goals as an Institute. We will provide an update regarding the application process for 2021 TBRI Practitioner Trainings in the Fall of 2020.