This two day train the trainer session will train agency workers as well as foster parents as co-facilitators in preparing resource parents (foster, adoptive and kinship parents) for parenting children who have been abused, neglected and spent time in the child welfare system. The jargon-free Trainer’s Guide is readily used by both parent and professional trainers. The six video vignettes highlight experiences of children and resource families and provide guidance to potential resource families.

Objectives

  • Know how resource families differ from families formed by birth
  • Understand how and why children in the child welfare system develop survival behaviors
  • Understand the importance of assessing family strengths and using resources successfully
  • Understand the importance of separation, loss and grief for children who have
    lived in the child welfare system
  • Understand how to help children in transition establish new relationships without giving up former attachments
  • Understand attachment and its importance in successfully raising children from the system
  • Understand that disciplinary techniques used with children from the child welfare system differ from those used with children living with their birth families
  • Understand how to plan for crisis as a predictable part of life as a resource family