Foster Parent College
FosterParentCollege.com® (FPC) provides innovative, research-based, interactive online courses for foster, adoptive, and kinship parents. Our self-paced training is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. From the comfort of home, parents can enroll, complete a course, and receive a certificate of completion in a single session. The content is developed by nationally recognized experts in the fields of parenting, social work, pediatrics, psychology, psychiatry, and education. FPC courses are valued by foster care agencies and praised by caregivers.
~ General Courses ~
As a licensed caregiver, you can take up to fifty percent of your required training hours online.
Below are some options that will satisfy the requirements of your Individual Training Needs Assessment(ITNA).
Caring for Children Who Have Been Sexually Abused
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Pre-Service Training
Credit Hours: 4
Cost: $20
Explores the emotional and behavioral effects of child sexual abuse on children in care and offers strategies to help overcome the challenges foster parents face.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
Child Abuse & Neglect
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Pre-Service Training
Credit Hours: 4
Cost: $20
A pre-service course designed for individuals interested in caregiving which focuses on child maltreatment. Learn about the characteristics, symptoms and reporting standards for child maltreatment. Caution: contains graphic images.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
Child Safety and Supervision
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Michael F. Quinn, M.A., uses a professional childcare worker’s approach to child safety, providing foster parents with effective supervision strategies and tools for collecting background information, making in-home observations, and making supervision adjustments.
Cultural Issues in Parenting
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 4
Cost: $20
Examines how parents can support children’s cultural differences, including differences in customs, beliefs, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and why that is important to healthy growth and development.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
Culturally Competent Parenting
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Dr. Tanya M. Coakley discusses how culturally competent parenting can provide minority children an environment that respects and nourishes their sense of self.
- Closed Captioning Available
Foster Care to Adoption
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 4
Cost: $20
Explores the process and challenges of moving from foster care to adoption and offers insight and advice for helping adoptive family members through those challenges.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
Grief & Loss in the Care System
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Charley Joyce, LICSW, discusses grief and loss as it impacts foster children, birth parents and foster caregivers.
House Safety
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
This course shows how foster parents can observe safety rules for licensed or certified residential care facilities using self-inspections.
It’s My Marriage!
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 8
Cost: $40
Explores how resource parent couples can resolve conflict and promote intimacy in the family through improved communication.
Kinship Care
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Viewers will learn about family feuds, allegiance to birth parents, distance and defiance with kinship family.
Parent-Child Attachment
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 4
Cost: $20
This course explores the difference between healthy and unhealthy attachment, how separation and loss affect attachment, and how attachment theory applies to real life.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
Parenting a Child Who Was Substance Exposed
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Explores how parents can care for children who were prenatally exposed to substances or drug endangered.
- Closed Captioning Available
Positive Parenting 1
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Viewers learn how to use cooperation, tracking behavior, and encouragement as parenting techniques.
- Closed Captioning Available
Positive Parenting 2
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
This course discusses setting limits and behavior contracts as positive parenting techniques.
- Closed Captioning Available
Positive Parenting 2
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
This course discusses setting limits and behavior contracts as positive parenting techniques.
- Closed Captioning Available
Positive Parenting 3
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Strategies for using time-out, privilege removal, and assignment of extra chores to manage difficult behavior are discussed.
- Closed Captioning Available
Reducing Family Stress
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 4
Cost: $20
Explores adding a foster child to the family and offers insight into how to preserve the family structure and reduce stress caused by a changing dynamic.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
Safe Parenting
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Developing safety and treatment plans are discussed in the context of meeting state regulations and the individual child’s needs.
Reducing Family Stress
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 4
Cost: $20
Explores adding a foster child to the family and offers insight into how to preserve the family structure and reduce stress caused by a changing dynamic.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
Substance-Exposed Infants
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 4
Cost: $20
Dr. Robert Nickel and Susan Edelstein, M.S. discuss the issues and challenges faced by parents who care for substance-exposed infants, including the effects of legal and illegal drugs, multiple substance abuse, working with the child’s professional team, and successful parenting strategies.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
The Child Welfare Team
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 4
Cost: $20
Covers how the child welfare system works, purpose and goals of the system, key terms, and who the child welfare team members are, as well as their roles and responsibilities.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
The Foster Home Investigation Process
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Explores the foster home investigative process, Plans of Corrective Action, and the role of foster care investigators.
The Impact of Fostering on Birth Children
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Explores the challenges foster families face pre-placement, during placement, and post-placement and offers insights and advice for helping birth children through those challenges.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
The Role of Mandated Child Abuse Reporters
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Explores the role and challenges mandated child abuse reporters face during the reporting process and offers strategies for helping ensure subsequent investigations are not compromised.
Understanding Behavior in Foster Children
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 4
Cost: $20
Explores problematic behavior in foster children and how foster parents can better understand the purpose of a child’s behavior through careful observation.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
Understanding Behavior in Foster Children
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 4
Cost: $20
Explores problematic behavior in foster children and how foster parents can better understand the purpose of a child’s behavior through careful observation.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
Understanding Birth Family Relationships
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Parenting Strategies
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Explores the range of openness in adoption, the birth connection, and birth relationships.
Working Together with Primary Families
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Pre-Service Training
Credit Hours: 4
Cost: $20
Explores the benefits and challenges of building a working relationship between foster and primary families, and offers strategies for developing respectful, positive communication.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
Children Entering Care: Mental Health Issues
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Explores common mental health issues for children entering care, how disorders are diagnosed and treated, and how parents can work with professionals to support their children’s mental health needs.
- Closed Captioning Available
Children Entering Care: Physical Health Issues
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Explores common physical health issues for children entering care, and how parents can collaborate with health care providers to support their children’s medical needs.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
Children with Autism
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Dr. Robert Nickel addresses the many challenges parents of children with autism face: social and communication deficits, and common medical problems.
Eating Disorders
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Causes of and strategies for dealing with stealing and hoarding food, gorging, refusing certain foods, and anorexia are examined.
Escalating Behavior Unwrapped
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
This course explores escalation, its causes, and strategies for de-escalation. Trauma-Informed Parenting is a prerequisite for this course.
- Closed Captioning Available
Fire Play and Fire-setting
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Covers fire play and fire-setting and the differences between the two behaviors.
Lying (2nd Edition)
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Common behaviors addressed in this course include getting out of trouble, gaining attention, pathological, and getting others in trouble.
- Closed Captioning Available
Noncompliance and Defiance
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Examines the spectrum of cooperation and noncompliance, from fearful cooperation to defiance, including the zone in the middle of the spectrum called self-assertion.
Reactive Attachment Disorder
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Healthy and unhealthy attachment, the emotionally promiscuous RAD child, the hyper-vigilant RAD child, RAD & other diagnoses are discussed in this course.
Running Away
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Searching for roots, running from rules, running from love and intimacy, wanting to be wanted, and running to street crime.
Sleep Problems (2nd Edition)
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Examines four types of sleep problems in children: fears about sleeping alone, frequent waking and roaming, nightmares and night terrors, and sleep problems and depression.
- Closed Captioning Available
Taking Things – Stealing
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Explores common reasons for taking things, including experimentation, intellectual disability, trauma history, and social or psychiatric problems.
Trauma-Informed Parenting
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Explores how parents can care for a child while being sensitive to his or her past traumatic experiences.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
Understanding Sex Trafficking
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Explores commercial sexual exploitation of children, what it is, and how parents can recognize signs that a child is being sexually exploited.
- Closed Captioning Available
- Also available in Spanish
Wetting and Soiling
Virtual-Self Lead/Self-Paced
Course Category: Behavior Management
Credit Hours: 2
Cost: $10
Wetting as an emotional outlet, wetting as a self-defense, classic daytime or nighttime wetting, soiling and smearing feces, constipation and withholding stools and discussed in this course.
Public Licensed Caregiver Registration Instructions:
You may elect to take training sessions that are directly related to your Individual Training Needs Assessment (ITNA). However, you MUST check with your caseworker PRIOR to taking any outside training sessions. Training sessions that are not pre-approved by your caseworker will NOT count towards your training hours. Please address all questions about your specific training needs (ITNA) and (re)certification to your caseworker.
– Click on REGISTER ONLINE button above and fill out the online registration form
– Cost for each course is waived.
Private Caregiver Registration Instructions:
Register directly through Foster Parent College’s website and pay course fee(s).
– Foster Parent College registration webpage
