On-demand Training for Certified Caregivers

Description​: This module describes how to become an advocate for children in your home to ensure they receive the services and supports that they need. Emphasis is placed on being a life-long learner, recognizing the importance of developing a support network (school, community supports, friends, medical), and learning about the types of services and supports that the child and/or the family that is fostering or adopting might find beneficial.​

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Description: This training module will focus on an introduction to caring for children in care for new Resource Parents and for anyone who is thinking about becoming a Resource Parent. Hear from youth about their experiences in care and learn about different aspects of caring for children entering foster care.

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Description: If you are interested in becoming a resource parent, or have been newly certified, learn more about the role of a resource parent in caring for tweens and teens, discussions you may have with teens, and considerations to help a teen learn daily living skills that prepare them for launch into adulthood.

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Description: If you are interested in becoming a resource parent, or have been newly certified, learn more about the role of a resource parent in understanding, acknowledging, and supporting all identities of a child you may be caring for.

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Description: In this module of the Being a Resource Parent Series, we cover what it means to be a resource parent and how being a resource parent impacts your entire family. We address the added stress that comes with fostering, the grief and loss felt by the care-giving family as children enter and leave your home and the importance of self-care, utilizing supports, assistance and resources to empower you with information needed to be a successful resource family.

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Description: If you are interested in becoming a resource parent, or have been newly certified, learn more about the role of the resource parent in applying the Reasonable and Prudent Parenting Standard. This standard allows resource parents to make day-to-day parenting decisions. Learn more in this module about the Reasonable Prudent Parenting Standard, and how this also applies to managing challenging behaviors.​​​

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​Description: ​What we know is that the most successful resource parents understand that their role goes beyond supporting the children in their care to supporting the children's families as a whole.   In this training module we will explore the Birth and Resource Parent Partnership – WHY a partnership is essential; WHAT is needed for a partnership to be successful; and HOW to begin building a partnership.  The bottom line is that co-parenting partnerships are beneficial to the child and youth experiencing foster care and reduces their trauma.

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​​​​​​​​Description: This module helps parents who are fostering and adopting understand concepts and definitions related to enhancing the resilience of children who have experienced trauma, separation, or loss. Protective factors are described along with strategies on how to build upon these factors to support children develop their identity, self-esteem, and skills toward self-advocacy.​

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​​​Description​: This module discusses the importance of self-care for parents who are fostering or adopting as well as practical ideas on how to incorporate it into their daily routines. The theme will help parents learn why maintaining their own mental, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being is so important when caring for children who have experienced trauma, separation or loss.​

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Description: This course will define the Child Adolescent Needs Strengths (CANS) assessment, summarize how a CANS assessment is used, identify the CANS contact at ODHS and critique how the CANS assessment impacts supports.​

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​Description​: Have you been curious about the process of a Child Protective Assessment in a Child Welfare certified resource parent home? Learn about the process, the roles of Child Welfare staff during an assessment, and what a resource parent can expect during the assessment.

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​​​​Description: This module provides an overview of some of the common thoughts and feelings experienced by children and adolescents who have been adopted such as believing that they were responsible for removal from their birth family, internalizing the message that they should be grateful or that they should feel lucky to have been adopted, feeling guilty regarding mixed loyalty issues and experiencing a sense of loss. The theme provides strategies that parents can use to support their children and to help them address and make sense of the thoughts and feelings they may be experiencing.

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Description: This module helps parents who are fostering or adopting understand some of the educational challenges children who have experienced trauma, separation or loss may encounter. The theme highlights some of the services and supports that can be put in place for children including Individualized Education Plans (IEP) and 504 plans as well as strategies that can be used to partner and advocate with the school system to ensure their educational needs are being sufficiently addressed.​​

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​​​​​Description: This module provides an overview of the impact fostering or adopting can have on family dynamics including the impact on marital relationships, biological children, foster or adoptive children already living in the home and extended family members. The theme helps parents who are fostering or adopting gain insight and increased understanding of how their family may need to adjust, as well as strategies that they can use to support healthy family dynamics.​

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​Description: The Guardianship Overview training helps provide information on types of guardianships, who can request changes, roles of the guardian and more. This course is a great addition to RAFT training and support conversations with the child's team.

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​Description: RAFT is the foster care certification training curriculum for resource parents, relative resource parents, pre-adoptive parents, and guardians. The RAFT training contains critical information about the kind of specialized parenting needed to meet a child’s needs, regardless of the age of the child. In this training, you will hear how RAFT can prepare you for parenting a child who has experienced trauma, separation and loss and equip you with the skills necessary for your adoption journey!

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​​Description: Provides prospective​​ adoptive families a brief overview of the common paths toward adoptions, opportunities for reflection and information on next steps.​

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​Description​: This module introduces a branch of behavioral health called Occupational Therapy, and covers how Occupational Therapy can help children complete their everyday activities such as: showering and getting dressed, regulate their emotions, ​reach developmental milestones, play, and learn. This module covers the following topics

• What Occupational Therapy is
• Signs and behaviors that a child may benefit from Occupational Therapy
• How to access occupational therapy as a resource parent

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​​Description: This module helps adoptive parents understand the importance of having ongoing conversations with their children about their birth and adoption story. The theme discusses how empowering children with the missing pieces of their story can help them build trust in family relationships, help with healthy identity formation, and can lead to stronger connections with birth family members. In this theme, adoptive parents learn how to have on-going conversation with their children about their life story that is done in an inclusive, open fashion.​

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Description: This module provides an overview of the impact transitions, both planned and unplanned, have on children who have experienced trauma, loss or separation. The theme discusses strategies parents can use to make these transitions less traumatic and disruptive. Strategies for making children feel welcomed and connected before, during, and after transitions occur are shared.

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​​​Description: This Resource Parent training provides an overview of the different medial services, how to prepare for appointments, and how to distinguish which appointments ODHS schedules vs. which services the resource parent needs to schedule.​​

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​​​Description: Children who have experienced trauma have unique feeding and nutrition challenges that can impact their growth, development and overall health. Understanding these challenges and addressing them with trauma-informed strategies allows caregivers the opportunity to improve nutrition and mealtimes and create resilience in the children in their care.

The course is self-paced and introduces the six principles of trauma-informed feeding and nutrition; discusses nutrition and mealtime challenges specific to children who have experienced trauma and offers guidance in addressing these challenges using trauma-informed principles.

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Note:​ After completion, please contact your certifier to add this Oregon State University course to your Workday Learning transcript.​

​Description​: The Oregon Safety​ Model for Resource Parents offers an opportunity for Resource Parents to learn about the steps ODHS Child Welfare follows to prioritize the safety of children and young people throughout the life of their case.

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​Description: Whether it is called co-parenting, shared parenting, partnership parenting, resource (foster) parents are expected to partner with the child's parents to facilitate reunification when possible. In this course, we discuss ways to develop a healthy relationship. This course is from Creating a Family, and includes instructors Carrie Sgarlata, an educator, mom, resource mom, and resource parent trainer and recruiter; and Andrea Leaman, a social worker with the Foster Care Licensing and Placement Program with Children’s Wisconsin Community Services and trainer in partnership parenting.

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​Description: Hear from Amanda Purvis, a Training Specialist at the Karyn Purvis Center for Child Development, about practical tips for disciplining while maintaining attachment. Amanda is a social worker, and a parent to five children, some of whom have experienced early life trauma. This course is from Creating a Family.​

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​​Description: This module provides an overview of the common skills that youth will need to effectively navigate as an adult and provide strategies on how families who are fostering or adopting can prepare youth to successfully transition into adulthood. The theme highlights the variance that can exist between chronological and developmental age for children who have experienced trauma, separation and loss and how this can impact the transition to adulthood. Some of the challenges that youth may face during this transition are highlighted.​​​

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​​​​Description: This module provides an overview the importance of children maintaining visits with their family and how to check in and address concerns, questions and emotions children may encounter before and after the visits. The theme provides strategies on how to help children name and validate the range of feelings they may experience before, during and after a visit and understand the role that parents who are fostering or adopting play in these visits.​

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​​Description​: This module highlights some of the difficulties children who have experienced trauma, separation or loss can have in regulating themselves. The theme reviews the different phases of crisis and provide parents who are fostering or adopting with strategies to proactively prevent a crisis from occurring. This theme reviews ways to keep the children safe when they are having a crisis and strategies that can help to de-escalate the situation.​​

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​​Description: This module briefly explores how early childhood trauma and neglect may impact a child’s ability to interact successfully with their outside world – sensory integration. This theme provides parents who are fostering or adopting with the ability to identify behaviors related to sensory integration difficulties and strategies to aid a child with sensory integration challenges in the home, school, and community.​

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​​​​Description: This module provides an overview of healthy sexual development and how to talk to children about healthy sexual development and relationships. The theme addresses some of the needs children who have experienced trauma, loss or separation may have in developing a positive, healthy identity relative to their sexual orientation, gender identity and expression (SOGIE) and sexuality. The theme also highlights strategies parents who are fostering or adopting can use in supporting the child’s sexual development.​

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