Transracial Training

Since we are maintaining our state license as foster/adoptive parents, we also have benefits through the state’s Foster and Adoptive Parents Association. One of the benefits is that they provide courses that can count towards the training requirements for annual license renewal. Their September through January schedule just came out, and I’m very interested in two of them, as they will relate to the children we’re adopting from Haiti. The first class is called “Advance Topics in Transracial Adoption and Foster Care”. The second is “People of Color: Skin and Hair Care with a Familiar Twist”.

The first class “explores the hard hitting realities, both positive and challenging, of being a transracial, multicultural family living in a race conscious society. We will discuss how to address the hard questions, how to prepare families, how to be a prepared family and what a successful transracial adoption looks like. Suggestions for creating healthy road maps for children and families will be presented.” Sounds like it will be very helpful for our children and us.

The second class is “a fun and lively opportunity to learn the care of hair and skin for children of color, along with health issues that are of importance to specific cultures. This class will provide a hands-on learning opportunity, including demonstrations. Internet resources are provided to learn more about specific cultural practices. (The trainer) will have skin care and hair care products on-hand.” This one sounds like lots of fun. Do you think I can get Jock to join me? He probably wouldn’t want or need to do much with the hair, but he needs to learn the skin care, right?!

We’ve already met our training requirements for CY2007, so I think I’m going to sign us up for one of these for January, and hope they offer the other one on their February through June schedule. They’re both 6 credit hours, so if we took both of them, we’d have double the requirements for license renewal. However, there’s been some speculation that they’re going to increase the training requirements to 12 hours per year next year, so we’d still be covered. Hopefully we’d be able to get them both scheduled before Elijah & Josephine are home, so we’ll not be totally clueless! :)