The Center for Child Welfare Expands its Quality Parenting Training to Fourth State
The Center for Child Welfare in the Department of Child and Family Studies became a partner with the Quality Parenting Initiative (QPI) in Florida in 2010, and its Just In Time foster parent training program was funded through the Center’s contract with the Florida Department of Children & Families (DCF). Since that time, the QPI has expanded outside the state of Florida to California and Nevada, and has recently contracted with Ohio as a fourth state seeking additional support for foster parents.
QPI is a system change initiative that recognizes that children who must be in foster homes require excellent foster parents who can meet their special needs while in their home and work as an equal partner in the system to achieve permanency for children. QPI is becoming a national initiative.
The Center’s QPI initiative provides timely, appropriate, online training to foster parents and other caregivers to promote parenting excellence for those who care for our nation’s children. Foster parents have the ability to request specific training topics and the program arranges for that training to occur through live webcasts that are interactive with leading professionals in their fields.
Center Director and Principal Investigator Don Policella states: “With QPI, an emphasis on excellent parenting is the norm. It was clear that in order to achieve this, foster parents need excellent and timely training that is appropriate to their needs, the special needs of foster children and is easily accessible.” The Center has issued thousands of training hour credits to caregivers, many of whom were never able to access in-service training due to schedules, geographic locations, etc.
For more information, contact The Center at qpiflorida@usf.edu or search and join Facebook for our various locations (QPI Florida, QPI Nevada, and QPI California, and QPI Ohio coming soon).