Keeping Yourself Going: Self-Care and Speaking Up for Your Child
Plain help for foster and kin caregivers on keeping your own strength up while you speak up for your child with the agency and the school. A 2-hour training with a certificate.
What this course is
This is the third course in the Family Who Stepped In series. It's for anybody raising a child who came to them through the child welfare system or through relatives. That includes grandparents, aunts and uncles, godparents and family friends, licensed or not. It fits a grandmother who got a call at midnight and a foster dad with ten years in. You'll get plain talk about the stress this kind of caregiving brings and simple ways to line up help. The lessons also cover how to speak up for your child with a caseworker or a school and still keep those people willing to work with you. It's taught by Michael Gaither, an adult adoptee who spent 30 years in schools as a teacher and a principal. Each lesson takes about twenty minutes, and you can print every page.
What you'll be able to do
- Spot the early signs that you're running low and do something about it before it reaches your child.
- Build a team of people and programs around you, and ask for help in a way that's easy to say yes to.
- Calm yourself first when your child's behavior gets hard, so your child has a steady adult to lean on.
- Keep good notes and follow up in writing so the caseworker and the agency hear you.
- Walk into a school meeting ready, and leave it with a plan for your child.
How the certificate works
- Take the opening quiz as a warm-up. It doesn't count toward your certificate.
- Work through the six lessons in order. Each one comes with a printable page you can fill in and keep.
- Type your plan right into the course, one line at a time. Each line comes with an example to help you.
- Pass the final quiz with at least 8 out of 10. You can retake it as many times as you need.
- Answer a short evaluation, and your certificate unlocks for 2 training hours.
Please check with your licensing worker or agency about how many hours they accept for self-paced training.
For agencies
Agencies can license this course for all of their foster and kin families. You can set that up by emailing hello@beyondthemomentadoptionstudio.com.
About your instructor
Michael Gaither is an adult adoptee. He was born in Syracuse, New York, and spent about eighteen months in foster care before he was adopted. He grew up with a white family in Lincoln, Nebraska, and met his birth family in person for the first time at forty-nine.
He spent 30 years in education as a teacher and a principal, and 13 of those years running his own executive leadership coaching business for school principals. His book, I Was Your Black Child: What White Parents Raising Black Children Need to Hear Before It's Too Late, tells the story of growing up Black in a white household. Through Beyond the Moment Adoption Studio, he helps adoptive and foster families understand what their children may be carrying.
Course curriculum
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1Start Here
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2The Six Lessons
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3Finish and Get Your Certificate