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Foster Parent Training and Licensing
Supporting your success every step of the way.
Becoming a foster parent can be an immensely rewarding experience. You are providing a safe, supportive environment for a child at a critical time in their life. By opening your heart and home to a child in foster care, you provide guidance, stability and love, and help them flourish and grow into a confident, contributing member of the community.
KVC Missouri uses the Specialized Training Assessments Resources (STARS) program, as required by Missouri’s Department of Social Services’ Children’s Division and developed by the Child Welfare League of America.
If you are already in the process of becoming a licensed foster parent or you are in need of training credits to maintain licensure, view upcoming trainings here and sign up to save your spot!
Understanding the Process for Training and Licensing
Foster parenting requires thorough training to ensure you’re equipped with all the skills needed to support a youth in foster care. The process is simple and ensures that you have all the education needed to guide you through every step of the journey. Prospective foster parents are required to:
- Pass several background checks, with no criminal or abuse/neglect record
- Complete all required paperwork and be fingerprinted
- Be financially stable
- Be in good physical, mental and emotional health
- See more criteria on becoming a foster parent
LEARN ABOUT Becoming a FOSTER PARENT
Required Training to Become Licensed
Prospective foster parents are required to complete 27 hours of in-class STARS training. KVC Missouri holds trainings two to three times per year in various regions. All training from is free. You must also become certified in CPR/First Aid.
Once licensed, foster parents must complete additional in-service training annually to maintain licensure. This is a mix of online videos, books and in-person courses.
KVC Missouri also provides additional training for foster families wanting to become a Treatment Foster Care home.
FOSTER PARENT TRAINING COURSES
Home Assessment/Evaluation
Successful passage of this component is mandatory before being recommended for foster home licensure. It includes a home visit to ensure the home has sufficient space to accommodate a foster child and meets safety requirements.
Sign Up Today
Trainings are scheduled throughout the year. To learn more about foster parent training or to be connected to a person in your area who schedules training, call us toll free at 844-424-3577 and view upcoming trainings.
LEARN ABOUT Becoming a FOSTER PARENT
Explore our selection of popular trainings below:
This training helps foster parents understand why it’s important to keep siblings together when they can’t live at home. Foster parents will learn to support team decisions about where siblings should live and how to support families willing to care for them together.
This training teaches foster parents how to talk to the court about why siblings should stay together. It also helps them learn the rules and laws that decide where siblings live when they can’t be with their parents.
By the end of this training, foster parents will know more about how to take care of siblings and will feel more confident in making decisions.
This training is required for all newly licensed foster parents in the first two years of licensure.
This training helps foster parents understand the rules that decide where a child should live when they can’t be with their family. This training shows how these rules work from the start of the case until the child is placed in a home.
In this training, you will:
- Learn about the laws for deciding where kids should live and how they apply during the case.
- Find out how to talk about these laws with the Family Support Team and in court.
- Understand why it’s important to write down the reasons for decisions about where the child lives, as required by law.
- Use different things like family and other important facts to help decide where the child should live according to the law.
This training is required for all newly licensed foster parents in the first two years of licensure.
This training helps soon-to-be adoptive parents understand the adoption process and the needs of children awaiting adoption. It helps parents learn about their strengths and challenges in building a loving adoptive family.
Participants will learn important skills needed for adoption, such as understanding the differences in adoptive families, dealing with feelings of loss and making a lifelong commitment to the child they adopt. They’ll also discover what the family preparation and assessment involve and how to work well with adoption agencies.
Additionally, the course explains the roles of different people involved in the adoption process, like social workers, lawyers, judges and other support systems. By the end, participants will have the knowledge and tools to navigate adoption confidently and create a caring home for their adopted child.
This is an interactive workshop where participants learn how trauma-informed parenting can support a child’s safety, permanency and wellbeing. Participants will engage in skill-building exercises to help them apply this knowledge to the children in their care. The workshop uses detailed case vignettes and the participant’s experiences with children as a foundation for teaching concepts related to youth traumatic stress. We cover eight modules in five sessions.
This is a holistic, multidisciplinary approach that is flexible, attachment‑centered and challenging. It is an evidence‑based, trauma‑informed intervention that is specifically designed for children who come from hard places, such as maltreatment, abuse, neglect, multiple home placements and violence, but you’ll see that the principles apply to all children. TBRI® consists of three sets of harmonious principles: Connecting, Empowering and Correcting Principles.
TBRI can also be considered a Level A class.
This training is required for Missouri foster parents to provide care for children with elevated needs and qualify for the Elevated A reimbursement rate. It is also open to families that are interested in taking children with elevated needs or who are having a challenging time with behaviors with current placements.
CORE Teen is a comprehensive curriculum tailored for current and prospective parents navigating the unique challenges of raising older children from foster care with moderate to severe emotional and behavioral complexities. This classroom-based program spans seven intermediate to advanced sessions, addressing crucial aspects of parenting in this context.
The sessions are structured as follows:
- Introduction & Understanding the impact of trauma on youth in foster care
- Parenting youth who have experienced trauma
- Developing and sustaining a healthy and supportive relationship with your youth
- Nurturing youth’s cultural/racial/ethnic needs and sexual orientation/gender identity and expression
- Understanding and managing youth’s challenging behaviors – Part 1
- Understanding and managing youth’s challenging behaviors – Part 2
- A new suitcase of parenting knowledge and skills
The course’s interactive nature combines various teaching methods such as lectures, videos, activities, and discussions. Participants will engage in collaborative learning, sharing experiences, and insights, fostering a supportive environment that encourages the exchange of knowledge and skills among peers.
Building on the training received in the Elevated A series, this training will focus on specific elements required to care for youth with Elevated needs. Participants must have completed the Elevated A training before the course starts.
This course will meet the requirements of Level B training as well as Treatment Foster Care training.
This purpose of this training is to provide professional respite services to our foster families. Respite is an important service offered to foster parents that helps connect children in care to safe, healthy relationships, and to give our foster homes a break. We cover an overview of the purpose of respite care, an overview of caring for children in care, the respite process, and requirements for homes providing respite care for the State of Missouri.
Upon completion of the course participants will complete a quiz and start the application process to become and in home respite provider which includes fingerprint background check and safety evaluation of your home.