Parenting Strategies

Explores healthy sexual development of children and teens in care and how parents can support youth’s sexual health and wellness.

Explores how parents can use motivational interviewing techniques to help build trust with the youth in their home, engage them in conversation, and encourage behavior change. Designed for parents of teens, but may be helpful for parents of younger youth as well.

Explores postsecondary education and how resource parents can help youth in grades 6 to 10 prepare for it. (For parents in California, this course is equivalent to Turning Dreams into Degrees, Education Course 1.) [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 children who were prenatally exposed to substances or drug endangered.

Explores the range of openness in adoption, the birth connection, and birth relationships.

Explores how resource parent couples can resolve conflict and promote intimacy in the family through improved communication.

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 role and challenges mandated child abuse reporters face during the reporting process and offers strategies for helping ensure subsequent investigations are not compromised. [Also available in Spanish]

Explores the foster home investigative process, Plans of Corrective Action, and the role of foster care investigators.

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]

Dr. Robert Nickel and Susan Edelstein, M.S. discuss the issues and challenges faced by parents who care for substance-exposed infants, including the effects of legal and illegal drugs, multiple substance abuse, working with the child's professional team, and successful parenting strategies. [Also available in Spanish]

Michael F. Quinn, M.A., uses a professional childcare worker's approach to child safety, providing foster parents with effective supervision strategies and tools for collecting background information, making in-home observations, and making supervision adjustments.

Charley Joyce, LICSW, discusses grief and loss related to removal and placement of a child, and how grief and loss impacts the child, birth parents, and foster caregivers. [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]

This course shows how foster parents can observe safety rules for licensed or certified residential care facilities using self-inspections.

Roles and responsibilities, entering a new school, working with the school staff, special education, and parent advocacy are discussed in this course.

What to expect before, during, and after visitation with birth parents and strategies for helping the foster child transition back to their foster home are examined in this course.

Viewers will learn about family feuds, allegiance to birth parents, distance and defiance with kinship family.

Viewers learn how to use cooperation, tracking behavior, and encouragement as positive parenting techniques.

Viewers learn about setting limits and using behavior contracts with the children in their care.