Topics for Caregivers

The web-based Foster Parent Pre-Placement training is designed specifically for Wisconsin’s foster parents. This is the training approved by the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and required for all foster parents. The content meets the requirement for pre-placement training identified in DCF 56.

Foster Parent Pre-Placement

The Adult, Child and Baby First Aid/CPR/AED web-based course will prepare caregivers to recognize and treat a variety of first aid, breathing and cardiac emergencies involving adults, children and infants. This course is offered though the American Red Cross. Click on the link below to be directed to the American Red Cross website where you can sign up and pay for the course.

Adult, Child and Baby First Aid/CPR/AED

Building Healthy Identities is a revised version of Module 2 in the Foster Parent Foundations Training and intended as an ongoing training for parents that completed module 2 prior to July 2022.

This 1-hour module was designed to support you and the children you are caring for in developing healthy identities. This module highlights strategies for doing this work and builds understanding of the experience and effects of race‐based discrimination as well as discrimination against LGBTQ+ youth. You will thoroughly explore ways to help children establish and maintain healthy identities through the topics of marginalization, discrimination, racism, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

Building Healthy Identities

Sex trafficking of children is a growing concern nationally and in Wisconsin. Sex trafficking of minors has been identified, investigated, and charged in most, if not all, counties within Wisconsin. It is both an urban and rural issue.
This course is designed to provide crucial information to caregivers about what child sex trafficking is and how children are recruited and trafficked. You will be provided with information on how to reduce a child’s vulnerability to sex trafficking.

Caregiver Training: Understanding Child Sex Trafficking in Wisconsin

The web-based Foster Parent Independent Living: Building the Path to Independence Training supports foster parents in understanding their role in helping to build life skills for the children and youth whom they are fostering.

Independent Living: Building the Path to Independence

For generations, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings have cared for and supported for their young relatives. Families often plan for and adapt to parental absences, such as deployments, illnesses, or lengthy work-related travel. And in times of crisis, when a child’s environment is unsafe, or their parent is unable to provide full-time care and stability, relatives step up to care for the children in their family.

Wisconsin is a national leader in relative placements. Our child welfare system believes when a child is unsafe and out-of-home care is necessary, placement with relatives is best practice. It provides unique benefits, lessens the negative effects, and promotes a child’s permanency and well being

This resource provides a glimpse into the thoughts and feelings of caregivers in situations like yours. We hope that you recognize the feelings and challenges you may be experiencing are common, and you are not alone. And, there are services and supports available for families like yours.

Kinship Navigator Module

Children in out-of-home care have the right to have a normal childhood or adolescence. The people involved in their lives are responsible for creating as much normalcy as possible.

The Reasonable and Prudent Parent Standard, which federal legislation requires and the state of Wisconsin enacted improves normalcy for children living in out-of-home care. We’ll introduce the Reasonable and Prudent Parent Standard, explain the importance of normalcy, and walk through examples of how out-of-home care providers make reasonable and prudent parenting decisions.

This training has information specific to congregate care staff who work at Residential Care Centers, Group Homes, and Shelter Care facilities.

The Reasonable and Prudent Parent Standard for Congregate Care Staff

Children in out-of-home care have the right to have a normal childhood or adolescence. The people involved in their lives are responsible for creating as much normalcy as possible.

The Reasonable and Prudent Parent Standard, which federal legislation requires and the state of Wisconsin enacted improves normalcy for children living in out-of-home care. We’ll introduce the Reasonable and Prudent Parent Standard, explain the importance of normalcy, and walk through examples of how out-of-home care providers make reasonable and prudent parenting decisions.

The Reasonable and Prudent Parent Standard for Private Adoption Foster Parents

Children in out-of-home care have the right to have a normal childhood or adolescence. The people involved in their lives are responsible for creating as much normalcy as possible.

The Reasonable and Prudent Parent Standard, which federal legislation requires and the state of Wisconsin enacted improves normalcy for children living in out-of-home care. We’ll introduce the Reasonable and Prudent Parent Standard, explain the importance of normalcy, and walk through examples of how out-of-home care providers make reasonable and prudent parenting decisions.

This training has information specific to unlicensed out-of-home caregivers.

RPPS for Unlicensed Out-of-Home Care Providers

This brief video introduces the viewer to the Vel R. Phillips Children’s Court Center in Milwaukee. Designed for Foster Parents, Social Workers and others who have business with Milwaukee County Children’s Court, the video provides an orientation to the offices and various services offered at the Center.

Access the Video