Workforce Training Schedule_November 2023

Advanced Guidelines for Difficult Conversations
In this workshop for supervisors and managers, you will develop skills for engaging across culture when tension exists. Together we will explore intent vs. impact, how implicit bias can affect decision making in determining outcomes and unpack dynamics between employees when conflict exists. You will learn how best to approach tense situations through role playing, video, and small and large group discussion. 

9 a.m.-4 p.m. Nov. 20
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Afterhours Core 3.2 Maltreatment and Placement: Neglect and Sexual Abuse
In this course, you will practice distinguishing between medical child abuse, medical neglect, starvation and failure to thrive. You will learn more about how to talk with children, including skills for responding when a child spontaneously discloses abuse. You will also build on your understanding of what young people might expect when visiting a Child Advocacy Center. This will help you respond appropriately to questions or concerns from young people and their caregivers about ‘what happens next?” 

5:30-7:30 p.m. Nov. 6
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Afterhours Core 3.3 Maltreatment and Placement: Trauma Informed Placements
Afterhours staff respond in crises and emergencies – situations that are likely to be traumatic for everyone involved. In this course, you will consider ways to reduce the traumatic impact of removal from the home and placement into a new care setting. 

5:30-7:30 p.m. Nov. 7
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Afterhours Core 4.2 Caring for Children: Trauma Informed Care and Following ICWA
In this course, you will review several principles of trauma-informed care and consider how these apply to your routine interactions with children awaiting placement. You will consider what you will need (and need to do) to care for children awaiting placement, whether that is for an hour or a weekend. You will apply what you learned to your role in afterhours, and identify steps you should be taking to ensure everyone’s rights are protected.

Afterhours Core 4.3 Caring for Children: Worker Safety, Documentation and Infants
In this course, you will identify and discuss possible worker safety threats, both in homes and while supervising youth, and options to promote everyone’s safety. Specific requirements related to caring for infants and assessing and supporting their caregivers is reviewed, including policy related to safe sleep, period of PURPLE crying, and the plan of safe care.

Assessing Safety Beyond Removal: Family Time and Conditions for Return Home
In this training, you’ll consider how to best explain the safety threat that’s keeping a child in out-of-home care and think about how this threat impacts child safety during family time. You’ll practice applying the threshold questions to decisions about family time and articulating to the court why you are recommending a specific level of supervision, even when the child needs to remain out of the home. You will also learn to address areas of personal and institutional bias and how this appears in the language used to shape views of child safety. Finally, you’ll consider how safety threats can be mitigated when parents progress and children are able to return home, including how transition plans can support everyone’s long term success.

Child Protective Services In-Service
This course will describe the two different CPS pathways, Family Assessment Response (FAR) and Investigations. This training includes learning modules on: Interviewing members of a household to assess safety, including children, parents and Subjects; Collateral information gathering; Protocols when working with Law Enforcement (LE); Working with Child Protection Medical Consultant Network (MEDCON) and local medical providers; Utilizing the Child Safety Framework; completing the Investigative Assessment (IA) & the Family Assessment Response Family Assessment (FARFA); Following Indian Child Welfare Act policies (ICWA); and other policy & legal requirements. 

9 a.m.-4 p.m. Nov. 20, 21 and 22
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Domestic Violence in Child Welfare
In this course, you’ll learn more about the policy and legal guidance for child welfare work with families experiencing domestic violence. More importantly, you’ll learn the best practices for this work and get to practice applying these best practices. 

12:30-4:30 p.m. Nov. 6, 13, 20 and 27
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Harm Reduction and Safety Planning With Substance Using Families
This course will provide you with an understanding of substance use and when it affects the safety of children in the family, how to safety plan with families who have children of all ages (0-18), how to support clients in their treatment programs, and how to measure progress sufficient to have mitigated the safety threats to the children.

Identifying and Supporting Commercially Sexually Exploited Children for Workforce
This course will help workers who do ongoing work with adolescents in the child welfare system identify youth who are at risk for or are being commercially sexually exploited. The training will provide a framework for understanding this issue that greatly impacts adolescents in the child welfare system, as well as for understanding the basic social work practices that support helping these youth reach positive outcomes. Participants will leave understanding DCYF’s policy and legal requirements related to screening and supporting these youth, will practice and consider approaches to supporting these youth, and will be provided with a list of some community resources.

1-4:30 p.m. Nov. 13, 14 and 15
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Impacts of Parental Mental Health on Child Safety
Participants will be engaged to consider their own thoughts, beliefs, and biases about mental illness; understand basic definitions associated with parental mental illness and child safety; and identify family assessment strategies that can focus on the intersection between parental mental illness and child safety. Additionally, ideas and tools for drafting effective case plans and objectives to achieve child safety with parental mental illness is a factor will also be discussed. Finally, participants will receive resources for services and interventions that promote the reduction of risk associated with parental mental illness and enhance protective factors for family well-being.

Infant Safety: Plan of Safe Care
The Plan of Safe Care is an element of case planning for families with infants born with and affected by substance abuse or withdrawal symptoms resulting from prenatal drug exposure, or a Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, or born to a dependent youth. The Plan of Safe Care focuses on access to a network of community-based providers and support services and addresses the needs of both the infant and the family/caregiver. The focus of this course is to provide opportunities for demonstration, practice, and feedback pertaining to meeting the practice and policy requirements for this component of the Infant Safety Education and Intervention Policy. 

Informing Decisions Through Critical Thinking
Using objective evidence, recognizing patterns of behavior, considering families’ perspectives, and utilizing collaterals can improve decision-making in child welfare. Skills to ensure incorporation of new information and to identify biases, including confirmation bias, will be examined in this course to improve decision making. 

Secondary Trauma: Impact and Solutions
This course will help those who do ongoing work in the child welfare system with identification of and responses to secondary trauma. The training will increase knowledge and understanding of the levels of secondary trauma, its impact, and how to manage the impact in our environment.

9 a.m.-12 p.m. Nov. 17
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Suicide Prevention LEARN Training by Forefront for Workforce
LEARN is a suicide awareness training that helps participants identify and act on signs of suicide. LEARN® is designed to empower individuals to help others move in the direction of hope, recovery, and survival. 

9 a.m.-12 p.m. Nov. 14
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Supervisor Readiness
This three-hour course covers Situational Leadership and Supervisor Readiness (4Rs). The course will review the three necessary components and strategies to impact performance. The Situational Leadership Theory developed by Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard presents a model that suggests that to be effective leaders, supervisors must match their leadership style to an individual worker’s level of job readiness (job maturity). The manager’s effectiveness depends on their ability to correctly identify the supervisor’s readiness level and to employ the appropriate leader style in that particular situation. Supervisor readiness for any task is determined by the supervisor’s ability and willingness.

Worker Safety
Worker Safety is a one-day mandatory training for social service specialists that covers: types of workplace violence related to social work practice; predictors of violent behavior; recognizing escalating behavior; safety in the field; safety precautions in methamphetamine sites; and resources and support for worker safety.