During this stressful time, the support staff at Foster Parent College wants to reassure you that our team is striving to provide as much additional support as possible, especially when agencies and resource parents are teleworking and remote training.
Registering new parents and enrolling them in courses.
Issuing parents' course certificates.
Transferring members to different groups.
Extending expired courses for trainees at will, rather than asking agency permission each time a trainee's course viewing time expires.
Setting up a Custom Series (online curriculum) to facilitate online training.
If you need assistance with our services, or if there is anything else FPC staff can do to support your agency staff and resource parents, please contact us at support@fosterparentcollege.com or 800-777-6636.
Blended Training During COVID-19
With state-ordered precautions to prevent the spread of the COVID-19, agencies have had to cancel in-person meetings with their parents. In response, we recommend agencies use our FPC pre-service blended approach to training and replace the in-person meetings with online group meetings. The online group meetings can be with platforms such as Zoom, GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar, and Lifesize.
Using FPC blended online training with a group meeting online platform component:
Agencies using an FPC unlimited account have access to the Series Training Program. This program gives agencies the ability to assemble custom online curriculums that fit agency/county/state training requirements. A new feature just released in FPC allows agencies to include scheduled online meetings along with instructions, registration information, meeting links, etc. between the assembled clusters in sequence.
If your agency decides to use this new all-online blended approach for parent training, it is important to first research and choose the online group meeting platform that will work best for your agency. Each meeting platform has its own benefits and pitfalls. Whichever online meeting platform your agency decides to use, we recommend providing parents/trainees with simple instructions on how to join and etiquette for participation.
After parents complete a training cluster, they will be sent information about the upcoming group meeting, including the details that you provided on how to join. Through FPC's management system, parents can also receive handouts/documents that would have otherwise been distributed during the in-person meetings. Agencies can further interact with parents by using course discussion boards or by creating their own discussion board topics. Please contact FPC to receive tutorials on how to use these features for online group meetings and interacting with your parents on FPC. We are here to support your agency needs!
Admin Mastery: Series Training Program
The Series Training Program is a relatively new feature to FosterParentCollege.com, available to agencies using our unlimited use payment plan. With the Series Training Program, FPC administrators can create a custom sequence of courses or groups of courses called Clusters.
Creating a Series:
In your primary group, administrators can create a series from an existing template or make your own template. Your subgroups will inherit the custom template from your primary group. Until now, most agencies used the Series Training Program only for Pre-Service Training, but because of the recent global crisis, many agencies are now implementing the Series Training Program combined with virtual meetings to supplement or replace in-person training.
Tip: Only agency administrators can create a series template. Agency staff can create series course lists and monitor progress but cannot start or edit a series.
Did you know?
You can set a minimum score for the Tests that appear at the end of the clusters. You may set the minimum score during setup or edit the score from the Review & Options subtab. If a minimum score is set, trainees must achieve at least this score to advance in the Series. If they do not pass, you can prompt them to retake the test.
All Pre-Service Courses Now Available with Closed Captioning
At Foster Parent College, we are committed to improving the lives of children in care by making sure our courses are available to as many resource parents as possible. Last summer, our dedicated team of programmers and staff began the process of adding closed captioning to all FosterParentCollege.com courses. Doing closed captioning correctly, especially for interactive exercises, is a time-consuming process. We are happy to announce that 16 of our courses are currently available with closed captioning, including all pre-service courses. (Courses with closed captioning available have the cc after the title.) We will be continuing our work until all courses are closed captioned.
At the same time, our programmers have begun the process of making our courses, and our website, more accessible to users who are visually impaired. Stay tuned to future issues of Solutions to hear about our progress on both projects.
Recent and Upcoming Courses
FosterParentCollege.com is continually creating new courses and updating existing ones. We have recently launched two new courses and have more in progress:
Problematic Sexual Behaviors: Advanced Parenting Workshop (launched October 2019)
Understanding Sex Trafficking (launched October 2019)
Preventing and Reducing Escalations (in production)
Preparing for Post-Secondary Education, Grades 6 to 10 (in production)
Eating Issues with Children in Care, 2nd Edition (under expert review)
Children with Autism, 2nd Edition (being scripted)
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (being scripted)
Motivational Interviewing for Resource Parents (being scripted)
Sexual and Reproductive Health (in pre-scripting)
Additionally, we are working with our translator, Mr. Omar Canals, and our team of reviewers to translate three more courses into Spanish. These courses will join the 14 courses already available for our parents who prefer to learn in Spanish. (To see a full list of courses available in Spanish,
click here.)
El tráfico humano y la explotación sexual (Spanish translation of Understanding Sex Trafficking, tentatively available late summer 2020)
Niños que entran en el cuidado temporal: Problemas de salud física (Spanish translation of Children Entering Care: Physical Health Issues)
Niños que entran en el cuidado temporal: Problemas de salud mental (Spanish translation of Children Entering Care: Mental Health Issues)
About FosterParentCollege.com: How We Develop Our Courses
Foster Parent College currently provides over 65 online, interactive courses designed specifically for foster, adoptive, and kinship families. Needless to say, we are always in the process of creating new courses. The process of developing our evidence-based training is involved. We start with understanding the need, often suggested by our agency clients, and identifying and engaging a nationally recognized expert on the subject. Together with the expert, our staff scripts the training and designs the interactives. Each course script is then sent out for review by at least two other experts in the field, and we use this feedback to finalize the script. While the production team is recording and programming the course, the handouts and review questionnaire are finalized. When completed, we prepare the course for our website, including writing descriptions, making the cover, and creating previews. This process takes about a year for each course. In addition, some courses are evaluated in research studies that assess their effectiveness, a process that can delay by 3 to 6 months the launch of a course.
To view the logic model behind Foster Parent College and how we see our course development leading to long-term outcomes for children in care, go to
/info/logicmodel.jsp. To read our research findings, go to
/info/research.jsp.