Online Course Designed for New Foster Parents Addresses Children's Mental Health Issues
August 27, 2019
Eugene, OR — “Roughly 80% of the children in care have some mental health issues, and often we can diagnose more than one mental health disorder,” says Dr. Robert Nickel, instructor for the new online course, Children Entering Care: Mental Health Issues. This course was developed specifically to help resource parents identify possible mental health problems when a child joins their family.
Children Entering Care: Mental Health Issues is the latest course available on the FosterParentCollege.com website. In this course, Dr. Nickel, a developmental pediatrician, explores what foster, adoptive, and kinship parents can expect when their child may have a mental health problem. Then he follows with a discussion of the diagnosis process, including the use of screening tests and the role of various mental health professionals.
The training uses two short family studies to provide an overview of how children express their externalizing and internalizing behaviors (with a focus on ADHD and depression). Then Dr. Nickel discusses how resource parents can get the right treatment for the children in their care, including behavioral strategies, therapy, supportive therapies, and medications. Special attention is given to the use of medications, questions parents should ask if their child is prescribed psychotropic medications, and what it means if a medication is prescribed "off label."
Children Entering Care: Mental Health Issues was designed as a companion course to Children Entering Care: Physical Health Issues, which was released last fall. However, both serve well as stand-alone courses.
Produced by Northwest Media, Children Entering Care: Mental Health Issues joins over sixty other online courses on FosterParentCollege.com, which specializes in interactive web-based training designed specifically for foster, adoptive, and kinship families. FPC web-based training is used as a resource throughout the country by agencies and individual resource parents.
