Foster Care Training

Session (7 & 8 of 8)

Pre-service Training for Prospective Foster and Adoptive Families:

Session Seven: Continuing Family Relationships – Participants begin with an activity regarding the importance of being connected to lifetime relationships followed by a discussion of a child’s developmental clock as a means to promoting and understanding of permanency timeframes in terms of making decisions that will achieve permanence. Participants learn about concurrent planning as a strategy for achieving permanence. Options for lifetime connections are detailed beginning with efforts to support families and to place children back with birth families or with relatives. Participants review and discuss other options including: adoption, guardianship, and planned alternative placement living arrangement. Group activities in this session focus on identifying the five tasks performed by foster parents toward supporting reunification and adoptive parents need to perform when a child is transitioning form the foster family to the adoptive family.

Session Eight: Planning for Change – in this session participants discuss and address practical ways of what to expect during the first hours, days and weeks of a child’s placement with a family. Participants learn what to ask the placement worker and how to talk to the child. They have the opportunity to explore how placement will impact the family, and particularly their children. We further explore both the immediate and the long-term impact of placement. Vignettes address specific skills in dealing with the impact of fostering and adopting n different family members. Fostering and adopting carry some risks for families, and these are discussed. The group explores ways to create a safe and healing home environment for children who have experienced sexual abuse, and strategies for handling the behaviors of these children. The session ends with a look at how foster families and adoptive families find support from other team members.