Training
Cate Robinson at Wings for Success Coaching and Consultancy provides a personal and professional training service for residential child care workers and foster carers.
Residential child care workers and foster carers are involved with some of the most vulnerable and complex children and young people in society. One would expect that to be able to carry out this work they would be provided with the best education, training and ongoing professional development however, more often than not, they have little or no education in social work, psychology, or child care practices, and ongoing training and development can also be limited.
In Chile, like many other countries, it has been evidenced that there are significant problems within the child protection and child care systems. Indeed it is clear that some children and young people have been placed at risk over the years whilst living within alternative care. As such, deinstitutionalisation is an important agenda supporting many children and young people to return home where possible, or alternatively to move to foster care and adoption. However, in my view good quality residential child care should also be part of a good child protection system, as some children and young people will not be able to return to their families, nor will their needs be met in either foster care or adoption. A parallel investment needs to be made by the government and social care organisations ensuring that residential care is reduced in size and is managed by skilled staff who understand the importance of working consistently with children to build relationships, support healing, and encourage achievement and positive development.
Wings for Success Coaching and Consultancy values the important role that alternative care can have in the lives of many children and young people. For this reason the training provided is developed by first assessing your organisational needs, along with the needs of your workers.
You then choose how you want the training to be carried out from the following options:
Training is available in:
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Three hour - One off session on a specific topic, theory, or practice
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Full day - One off session on a specific topic, theory, or practice
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Multiple sessions over a few weeks or months of either full or half days covering specific topics, theories or practices.
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15 week basic training program
*Individual home visits are available for your foster carers or they can be involved in the above sessions of training as part of a group.
Training can be combined with:
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Coaching support and guidance for managers
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External supervision for managers and workers
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Follow up sessions at set intervals to check worker/organisational development
The base modules of work can be studied in one off short sessions, or in greater depth depending on your need. You can choose the modules which are most pertinent to your team from the following:
Attachment
Connection between babies and carers
Child development
Relationships
Love
Communication
Modelling
Participation for workers and young people
Meaning making
Trauma
Healing
Self regulation
Resilience
Strengths
Wellbeing
Managing behaviour
Mindfulness and mindful practice
Developing skills for life
Working with Family
Working with other organisations and the community
Leadership
Using the daily life space and the rhythm of the day
Managing a flourishing home
Self care
*Evidently there are other topics that you may wish to explore and with Cate’s skills and experience she can design specific modules of training on request.
Training
The training is a dynamic process where Cate uses her skills as a coach to bring out the best in your workers to achieve optimum learning. This will involve educative presentations using up to date research and evidence based tools and practice, interactive discussions, individual, partner, and group work, role playing, games, videos, worksheets and homework practice.
Diary
Each worker will be encouraged to keep a diary to encourage greater reflection on moments of practice, actions, reactions, and feelings. This diary will be also be used to help workers to learn about self care, strengths, and wellbeing.
Strengths awareness
Each worker will complete a personal strengths assessment online prior to starting the first training session. They will print this and bring a copy to the session.
Personal and professional development
Throughout the process of delivering multiple sessions or a full basic program, Cate will be aiming her training to advance both your worker’s personal awareness as well as their professional knowledge, skills and practice.
Diagnostic tools
Where appropriate Cate will use different diagnostic tools to help workers learn about their usefulness in supporting practice.
Research
At different stages Cate may be working with researchers or other professionals interested in worker development and wellbeing. For this reason she will seek permission from your organisation and individual workers should she wish to use information shared within training.
*Any sharing of information will always be done anonymously.