Pre-Service Trainings

Explores common mental health issues for children entering care, how disorders are diagnosed and treated, and how parents can work with professionals to support their children's mental health needs. [Also available in Spanish]

Explores common physical health issues for children entering care and how parents can collaborate with health care providers to support their children's medical needs. [Also available in Spanish]

Explores how to provide normalcy for youth in care using the reasonable and prudent parenting standards. [Also available in Spanish]

Explores how parents can care for a child while being sensitive to his or her past traumatic experiences. [Also available in Spanish]

Examines how parents can support children’s cultural differences, including differences in customs, beliefs, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and why that is important to healthy growth and development. [Also available in Spanish]

Explores the process and challenges of moving from foster care to adoption and offers insight and advice for helping adoptive family members through those challenges. [Also available in Spanish]

Explores the benefits and challenges of building a working relationship between foster and primary families, and offers strategies for developing respectful, positive communication. [Also available in Spanish]

Explores adding a foster child to the family and offers insight into how to preserve the family structure and reduce stress caused by a changing dynamic. [Also available in Spanish]

Explores problematic behavior in foster children and how foster parents can better understand the purpose of a child's behavior through careful observation. [Also available in Spanish]

Explores typical child development, developmental domains and stages, temperament and goodness of fit, and the effects of abuse and neglect on a child's health and behavior. [Also available in Spanish]

Explores the emotional and behavioral effects of child sexual abuse on children in care and offers strategies to help overcome the challenges foster parents face. [Also available in Spanish]

Explores the challenges foster families face pre-placement, during placement, and post-placement and offers insights and advice for helping birth children through those challenges. [Also available in Spanish]

Covers how the child welfare system works, purpose and goals of the system, key terms, who the child welfare team members are, as well as their roles and responsibilities, and includes a bonus section on supporting sibling relationships of children in care. [Also available in Spanish]

This course explores the difference between healthy and unhealthy attachment, how separation and loss affect attachment, and how attachment theory applies to real life. [Also available in Spanish]

A pre-service course designed for individuals interested in caregiving which focuses on child maltreatment. Learn about the characteristics, symptoms and reporting standards for child maltreatment. Caution: contains graphic images. [Also available in Spanish]