ABOUT CHILDREN'S

Mandatory Training

Enhancing Relationships Through Teaming

This training promotes greater understanding and more rewarding relationships between private agency Foster Parents/Relative Caregivers and Children’s Administration staff. Social Workers can invite a Foster Parent/Relative Caregiver to the training, and vice versa.

• Participants learn how to identify the challenges of collaboration, discover which of their skills and resources best support teaming efforts, and discuss ways to enhance their working relationships. This training provides Social Workers and Foster Parents/Relative Caregivers an opportunity to view teamwork from each other's perspectives while encouraging reflection regarding the features and values of effective teaming.
• Training participants learn how to identify barriers to effective teaming, explore solutions to these barriers, and develop tailored approaches and practices that facilitate teamwork.
• This ½ day training is offered 12 times annually.

Permanency Planning From Day One

This training reviews the principles of permanency planning and discusses the challenges of concurrent planning. Training participants practice skills in relation to successful placement with kin and increase their understanding of the Adoption and Safe Families Act and the relationship between permanence and resilience. This course increases training participants' skills in strengths engagement and writing behaviorally-specific case goals.

• This 1 day training is offered 12 times annually.

Solution-Based Indian Child Welfare Training

The Solution-Based Indian Child Welfare manual training is an in-depth 3-day training on features and provisions of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), Washington Tribal-State Agreement, and the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA). Also included is an introduction to effective cross-cultural services, partnerships, and what it takes to implement the ICWA and Tribal-State Agreement. The training addresses requirements of ICWA and ASFA as they relate to placement and permanency planning services for Indian children. It includes training on the Children's Administration online Indian Child Welfare manual, tribal culture, and cross-cultural skills engagement with Washington state tribal child welfare programs.

• This training is offered 6 times annually.

Substance Abuse Training: Partnering Across Systems

• This training maintains a strong emphasis on collaboration and communication between child welfare and chemical dependency systems, treating the subject of parental substance abuse within the context of child protection and safety.
• The training focuses extensively on the topics of screening, referral and assessment, treatment, and application/integration of knowledge into practice.
• Social workers learn how to balance child protection and welfare (mitigating risk factors, decision to remove child or reunify family, etc.) with the parent's involvement in treatment; their recovery, relapse, etc. As a result of this training, social workers increase their competence working with Chemical Dependency Professionals, using the GAIN-SS screening tool, communicating across systems, creating joint case plans, strengthening community partnerships, and developing relapse and safety plans.
• This 2-day training is offered 6 times annually.

Understanding Neglect

This training examines chronic neglect in depth, with the goal of improving child welfare interventions with families. Training participants learn the importance of pattern recognition, comprehensive family assessment, community collaboration, and a child development focus in creating more effective child welfare interventions. Class discussions cover the relationship between and among long-term severe poverty, substance abuse, mental health problems, and histories of victimization. This training combines a theoretical perspective grounded in research with practice guidelines that can lead to improved outcomes.

• This 1 day training is offered 12 times annually.

Worker Safety

• The training is taught by Safety Awareness and Field Education Resources (S.A.F.E.R.).
• This training describes types of workplace violence related to social work practice, including violence by strangers, clients, co-workers and personal relations. Social workers learn to identify predictors of violent behavior and be able to recognize and effectively address escalating behaviors. Workers learn general safety measures while in the field, including precautions when on site at a methamphetamine lab. This training provides resources and tools to support worker safety. Workers learn when and how to engage law enforcement.
• This 1 day training is offered 7 times annually.