Improving Outcomes for Hispanic and Latino Children in Foster Care

FosterParentCollege.com® Launches the First Online Pre-Service Courses in Spanish

April 27, 2017

Eugene, OR — Throughout the United States, Spanish-speaking foster parents are needed! On any given day, roughly 20% of the children in foster care are of Hispanic or Latino descent. Research suggests that children in care do better when their biological and foster families share a common language and similar cultural backgrounds. For families with Spanish as their first language, one of the barriers to becoming foster parents has been the lack of Spanish-language training material. To address this need, FosterParentCollege.com® announces the addition of eleven Spanish-language training courses to its website.

“We constantly heard from agencies that there was a need for our courses to be available in Spanish,” said Lee White, founder of Foster Parent College. “Through self-funding and the assistance of many dedicated professionals, we completed this process over a 2-year period.”

People who wish to become foster parents need specialized training–called pre-service training–to help them understand how to care for children in the child welfare system, who have special needs due to the abuse and/or neglect they have typically experienced. Individuals who are more comfortable learning in Spanish often have a difficult time obtaining the pre-service training they need to become foster, kinship, or adoptive parents. Mr. White contracted with professional translator, Omar Canals of VOICE, LLC to create Spanish versions of eleven pre-service courses on FosterParentCollege.com.

Mr. White continued, “The translation process was challenging. We wanted the end result to be a conceptual, not literal, translation of the information provided. In addition, Spanish-speaking specialists in the field of social work assisted with the translation, ensuring the language was consistent with language used in social service agencies across the United States. I'd like to point out that the courses are intended to be part of a broader pre-service training program, which includes in-person meetings.”

Funding for the original English version of the pre-service courses was through SBIR grant #HD054032 awarded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development to Northwest Media, Inc., parent company of FosterParentCollege.com. Results of a study in Oregon of the English version, using a blending of online and in-person meetings, were recently reported in the journal Child Welfare.

Since 2004, FosterParentCollege.com has provided evidence-based training for resource parents. All courses are self-paced and available online. The eleven Spanish pre-service courses, along with over 40 English courses, are available 24/7 at FosterParentCollege.com.

For more information or to review one of the courses, contact Liz Brooks at Liz@Northwestmedia.com.