About Fairstart's Training Programmes
Fairstart offers free online training programmes for caregivers and leaders at children’s institutions or other group care settings and foster care parents, respectively. The programmes consist of 13-15 training sessions that include all basic aspects of quality care for children, illustrated through text and video. The programmes teach caregivers how to improve child development and well being, how to cope with traumatized children, how to handle many children per adult, and much more. Furthermore, participants train collaborative competences between leaders and staff, between foster parents and authorities and biological parents.
The programmes exist in various language versions and each of them are adjusted to the local culture of the countries. Additionally, participants are encouraged to adjust their own training to fit their specific circumstances. This is a huge advantage of the Fairstart training programmes.
PURPOSE: The purpose of the online-based training programmes is to educate caregivers of at-risk children and youth in research-based quality childcare.
USER GROUP: Caregivers and leaders in children’s institutions as well as foster parents, who lack education in coping with at-risk and traumatised children and youth.
TWO VERSIONS
There are two versions of the programmes:
- One for foster care systems
- One for staff in children’s institutions
All programmes have been developed with the assistance of a global network of researchers and child experts, thus ensuring highly professional educations. Below, you can read more details about each version.
GROUP CARE TRAINING PROGRAMME
This training programme is for training groups of caregivers in any setting where children and youth without parental care are brought up in groups and are cared for by staff, as for instance residential care, fugitive camps, children’s homes etc. It contains 13 sessions with topics that are relevant for caregivers of children placed in group settings. That includes how to practice professional caregiving, how to handle many children pr. adult, how to improve cooperation between caregivers and daily leaders, how to improve organisational development, etc. You can see the programme and choose language here
FOSTER CARE TRAINING PROGRAMME
This training programme is developed for training groups of foster parents, kinship carers or other settings where children and youth without parental care are brought up in a family. It contains 15 sessions with topics that are relevant for foster families. That includes the transition from traditional family to foster family, relations work, cooperation with authorities and schools as well as cooperation with biological parents. Fairstart is planning to develop an instructor education adjusted to the foster care programme. You can see the programme and choose language here