At the end of this training, you should be able to develop, document, monitor, and amend a DCFS in-home safety plan. This training is specific to DCFS In-Home Safety Plans and does not cover Court-Ordered Safety Plans, Provisional Custody, or Removal through a verbal or instanter order. Anywhere "Safety Plan" is used in this training, it only refers to the DCFS In-Home Safety Plan.

Children ages 6-12 continue to have unique physical, cognitive and socio-emotional growth milestones. This session will also focus on mental illness which often is not discovered until the child is in school. Warning signs of various disorders will be discussed, such as Anxiety Disorders, ASD, Depression, Eating Disorders, PTSD and more. Special attention will be given to the topic of bullying, which is often an issue for children in foster care. Upon completion of this course, participants will: - Learn about the important milestones between 6-12 years old. - Discuss warning signs of problems that may signal future concerns, such as mental illnesses and disorders that are often discovered within this period. - Learn how to help school age children contend with common challenges such as bullying, peer pressure, and lack of self esteem.

The Screening and Selection tool ensures applicants and DCFS interviewers are making informed decisions. It addresses the competencies in child welfare and seeks out the goodness of fit between the applicant and the demands of a career in child welfare. The main goal of administering the Screening and Selection process is to select more professionally committed and highly qualified applicants to strengthen employee retention and outcomes for children and families.

Foster parents and foster children go through a unique set of challenges. This training covers distinct types of stressors and their effects on your physical body, relationships, and overall-mental health. Avoiding stress may feel impossible but there are several ways to effectively manage stress. Many people have heard of the term self-care, but not everyone prioritizes practicing it. This class will go into a variety of ways to make self-care part of your daily routine. During this class, you will identify self-care practices that are already working for you and create an action plan of new self-care strategies tailored towards your current needs. This will include ways to practice self-care individually (as a foster parent or teen) as well as practice self-care as a family. LEARNING OBJECTIVES ?Become informed about how to recognize you are under stress and the impact stress can have not only on your physical and mental health, but also those around you. ?Learn about new and simple ways to prioritize your self-care. ?Create an individualized action plan of new self-care strategies to apply to your daily life.

This course is a part of the "Foster Parent Training: An In-Depth Exploration of Advanced Topics. Trainings will provide in-depth discussion of topics relevant for providing developmentally appropriate, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive, care for children involved with the child welfare system. Learning objectives: 1. Participants will be able to understand the importance of self-awareness in providing care for children involved with child welfare. 2. Participants will be able to discuss and identify roadblocks to practices that encourage self-awareness and self-care. 3. Participants will be able to identify how they can best engage in self-care practices and encourage this for the children in their care.

The course provides information about current services offered to foster youth.