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This training is designed for caregivers who are pursuing or considering adopting and have knowledge beyond the introductory level.  The class will prepare you to recognize the issues related to trauma, grief, and loss for adopted children.  Participants will leave with resources to guide them in connecting with supports within and outside the department to assist in the creation of an adoptive family that encourages individual and family wellbeing.

Learning Objectives

Following the training, participants will be able to:

• Understand the adoption process and identify your ideals and goals as an adoptive parent
• Identify the impact of trauma, loss, and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) on brain development
• Identify behaviors that are trauma based
• Understand the various types of attachment and how to work with you and your child’s attachment style
• Understand the resources available to adoptive parents and how to access supports for your family

Area Administrators need to achieve competency in understanding the child welfare practice as well as in the higher levels of systems management. This course provides Area Administrators with an introduction of baseline competencies for middle managers in public child welfare, and opportunities to develop and practice new skills regarding these competencies. Managing self, managing others, managing systems and managing outward are the four main themes integrated throughout this course.

Day 1: Foundations for Managers in Child Welfare
Day 2: Effective Relationships as a Manager
Day 3: Strategies for Effective Organizational Communication
Day 4: Growing and Sustaining Effective Internal and External Teams
Day 5: Essentials for Resource Management
Day 6: Strategic Thinking and Planning Tools for the Manager

Peter Dahlin, MS, is an experienced child welfare worker, supervisor, administrator and educator in the public sector for nearly 30 years. He has provided curriculum development, training, and evaluation services to child welfare, foster care, and family service agencies throughout the country and in Quebec. He has trained extensively throughout Washington and California. His specialty areas include trainer, supervisor, manager and executive development, and he has developed and delivered numerous training programs in these areas. He has created advanced trainings for supervisors and managers, including a required three-year program for Los Angeles County. He teaches the core manager (AA) course in the State of Washington, and developed and delivered part of the Core Supervisor Series in the State of Florida. His curriculum development work and training delivery, including that of “train the trainer” has also included clients such as National CASA and Casey Family Programs. As the former director of the Bay Area Academy, he oversaw an 18-month recruitment & retention study reviewing practices in thirteen counties with an emphasis on succession planning, and he has consulted with San Diego State’s Southern Academy on developing and delivering part of its Executive Development Program. He also provides executive coaching to managers and deputies in San Diego Child Welfare Services.

Comments from Area Administrator’s who participated in AA Core Training:

“What we do is so difficult we rely on each other.  And part of that is building a strong team that all come from the same mission and vision. Some of my folks had been here for a long time and they were on the verge of burnout and I had to think differently about how to look at that. Like what still motivates you to come in? why do you do it? What keeps you coming? That tool [from the AA training] I’ve used, asking them what are their passions and how can I help them get there.”

“The team work portion [was the most valuable part of the training].  I had them all do the short version of the disk assessment and it brought up different communication styles and what we can expect in their management group.  The most meaningful part of this training is because of the team and the connection they have. It’s the driver of retention in my opinion and I want to work on building teams to retain people.”

“There are some trainings where they tell us to go back to our staff and our staff come back and say ‘no we’re not going to do that.’ But we go back and this is real, what he gives us [in this training] we can use.”

“The value for me is the value for staff, the budget the grant information shouldn’t be hidden if you disperse that in a good way it will encourage creativity.”

“I found it helpful to learn about the relationship with money and funding. The detail was really helpful, because I had a general idea. We always talked about half of our salary was IV-E but that’s not really true, it’s a more nuanced conversation.”

“I really enjoyed the activity around staffing the formula around how much staff we should have. I want to go back and look at what the formula looks like for us, I appreciated the discussion around what types of different data we can use and the value of it.”

Tribal Member who participated in AA training:

“[Learning about the value of] external stakeholders was valuable. We’ve done work in the tribe around [our] vision and mission. But in terms of values, strategic plans in terms of brining in other stakeholders was valuable information to remember to bring those folks into the discussion.”

This 6 hour focused topic training for caregivers provides an in-depth exploration of Drug Impacted Infants and Toddlers. The training focuses on how to identify and address the impacts drugs have on infants and toddlers; how to recognize symptoms; set up a successful environment and work together with the team in providing care for the child. The takeaway from this training is feeling empowered to care for a drug impacted Infant as they grow through infancy, toddler and preschool

Participants will get a broad overview of the child safety framework, the safety assessment approach used by Washington State. Critical concepts including safe and unsafe, risk, present danger, safety threats, and global assessment will be reviewed. A particular area of focus is identifying present danger and taking a protective action (or creating a protective action plan) to ensure the danger is effectively managed. We’ll consider how to assessing others’ ability to participate in a protective action plan. Finally we’ll review the importance of documenting the concerns/threats and of communicating the plan.

Assessing Safety Throughout the Life of the Case is one and a half days of in service training, designed for Child Protective Services (CPS) Social Workers, Investigations and Family Assessment Response. The training focuses on the CPS Social Worker’s role in the initial and ongoing assessment of child safety. CPS Social Workers will develop and enhanced their skills regarding the Child Safety Framework and its applications.

This training focuses on learning how to identify present danger and how to take protective actions; how to gather, assess, and analyze relevant information related to safety and risk from child interviews, adult interviews, and collaterals; how to identify safety threats and develop realistic safety plans; and how to articulate and document safety and risk factors to others such as court officials, community partners and others involved in the case.

CPS Social Workers will learn how to re-assess child safety when considering reducing or increasing levels of supervision during parent-child visits; during reunification; and when there has been a change in composition in the household. CPS Social Workers will learn how to apply the Safety Framework when determining whether to close a case and how to complete a safety assessment to determine if safety threats have been mitigated, risks have been reduced, or identify new safety threats and developing higher levels of protection.