Foster Parent Training Classes

• Information on the differences between foster care, adoption, and kinship care.
• The importance of reducing moves for children.
• Review the foster parent application and process.
• Requirements of Ohio Revised Code.

• Overview of the child welfare system and the role of a substitute caregiver.
• The Team Decision Making Process.
• The role of foster parent as a team member.
• Community resources and support group information.

• The core concepts that shape our understanding of early childhood development.
• An overview of brain development.
• The importance of attachment, self-regulation and initiative in development.
• Factors that enhance development.

• How childhood trauma can affect development, including brain development, emotions, and behavior.

• Overview of child sex abuse.
• Potential indicators of sexual abuse.
• Creating a safe home environment for children who have been sexually abused.

• Strategies caregivers can use to help the child feel safe and accepted in their home and community.
• The importance of maintaining connections.

• Understanding diversity, including participants’ own, to better understand and respect the diversity of each foster child that comes into the home.
• Ways participants can prepare their home and community to provide a welcoming, safe, and nurturing environment for a foster child.

• Strategies to manage emotions and control behaviors that caregivers can use to assist children who have experienced trauma.
• Rules around corporal punishment.

• The rationale for foster caregivers to promote connections to primary family members, particularly primary parents and siblings.
• How to employ a non-judgmental approach while working with primary families to promote reunification.

• The impact of foster care and adoption on the individual members of the caregiving family.
• The impact on caregivers’ relationships with each other.
• Coping strategies and survival plans.

• The emotions children and youth experience when reunification efforts with their birth parents fail.
• Feelings of adopted children or children in long term placements.
• Typical triggers and long-term grief.
• The personal perspectives of adopted individuals.

• The adoption dynamics impacting families.
• Openness in adoption.
• Stages of adjustment for new adoptive families.
• Post adoption services, including subsidy.