CORE: Teen

CORE Teen is a curriculum for prospective and current parents who are or will be raising older children from foster care who have moderate to severe emotional and behavioral challenges. Spaulding for Children—in partnership with the Child Trauma Academy; the Center for Adoption Support and Education; the North American Council on Adoptable Children; and the University of Washington wrote the material. Research has consistently shown the benefits of placing children and youth in families.  Behaviors resulting from moderate to serious emotional health challenges and past trauma make it more likely teens will be placed in restrictive settings and age out of the child welfare system without achieving permanency.

Click the session titles below to register for upcoming trainings.

Session Date
Introduction and Understanding the Impact of Trauma on Youth in Foster Care February 2024
Parenting Youth Who Have Experienced Trauma April 2024
Developing and Sustaining Healthy and Supportive Relationships with Youth June 2024
Nurturing Youth's Culture August 2024
Understanding and Managing Youth's Challenging Behaviors Part 1 October 2024
Understanding and Managing Youth's Challenging Behaviors Part 2 December 2024

This session will define what trauma means in the context of its impact on youth in the foster care system. This class will describe ways that traumatic stress and adversity impact a youth’s development as well as describe the importance of responding to the underlying cause of a youth’s behaviors. The core competency of this class is that parents will nurture and promote the well-being of their youth through trauma informed parenting.

Recommended Right Time Videos: Parental Adaptation; Understanding and Recognizing the Effects of Trauma

This session will discuss two major adaptive responses youth in foster care may have towards threats. This class will describe how fear can change the way youth feel, think and act as well as trauma-informed techniques to effectively parent youth based on their emotional age and developmental state. This class will also discuss the important elements in creating a self-care plan. The core competency of this class is that parents will nurture and promote the well-being of their youth through trauma informed parenting.

Recommended Right Time Videos: Building Child Resilience; Understanding Behavior

This session will discuss the impact of loss and grief on teens. This class will discuss actions parents can take to enhance attachment and strengthen their relationship with their youth as well as ways that parents can deepen attunement with the youth they are or might parent. The core competency of this class is that parents can develop and sustain a healthy and supportive relationship with their youth.

Recommended Right Time Videos: Family Dynamics; Building Parental Resilience; Parental Regulation; Relationship Development

This session seeks to identify ways to incorporate the youth’s race, culture and ethnicity into family life as well as teach skills in communicating acceptance. This class will also discuss the importance of supporting youth’s connections and their sense of connectedness. The core competency of this class is that parents will honor their child’s cultural, racial, and ethnic needs with acceptance, nurturing and support.

Recommended Right Time Videos: Continued Connections; Life Story: Birth and Adoption Story; SOGIE

This session will teach skills parents can use in coping and managing their own emotions in the face of their youth’s challenging behaviors. This class will discuss ways that parents can effectively respond to their youth’s rejecting, testing and maladaptive behaviors as well as describe signs that their relationship with the youth is under stress. This class will also discuss the effects of secondary trauma on parenting. The core competency of this class is parents will understand their youth’s challenging behaviors and are able to manage them safely and effectively.

Recommended Right Time Videos: Managing Placement Transitions; Preparing for and Managing Visitation; Transitions

This session will teach skills in addressing crisis or severe behavior challenges. This class will teach skills in teaching your youth how to remain safe, recognize vulnerabilities of youth with challenging behaviors who have experienced trauma, and describe how to access and be actively involved in professional supports that your youth may need to access. The core competency of this class is that parents will understand their youth’s challenging behaviors and are able to manage them safely and effectively.

Recommended Right Time Videos: Accessing Services and Supports; Preparing for Adulthood; Responding to Children in Crisis; Sensory Integration; Sexual Trauma

Right Time Videos Recommended by Each CORE: Teen Session

All videos are available to watch and receive training credit for in the foster parent learning management system, DCS Brightspace. If you do not have a Brightspace account, you can learn more and request one on our Brightspace webpage. To receive training credit with TN DCS, you MUST complete the videos and associated course work within Brightspace. Please note that Brightspace accounts are only available to foster parents in the state of Tennessee. 

If you are from another agency or state and would like to view this content, click the titles below to view each video. 

These videos may be watched at any time and in any order. Attendance of a CORE Teen training session is not necessary to undestand the content in these videos and not required to receive training credit. These videos supplement the CORE Teen training. Foster parents can earn one hour of training credit for each Right Time video completed by completing the courses in the Brightspace learning management system. Each video counts toward both therapeutic and trauma training credit.

Accessing Services and Supports
This theme will describe how to become an advocate for children in your home to ensure they receive the services and supports that they need. Emphasis will be placed on being a life-long learner, recognizing the importance of developing a support network (school, community supports, friends, medical), and learning about the types of services and supports that the child and/or the family that is fostering or adopting might find beneficial. (15 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: Understanding and Managing Youth’s Challenging Behaviors Part 2
Building Child Resilience
Resilience can be defined as “the ability to achieve positive outcomes-mentally, emotionally, socially, spiritually- despite adversity” (Kain & Terrell, 2018).  The purpose of this module is to help foster and adoptive parents understand concepts and definitions related to enhancing resiliency in children who have experienced loss, separation, or other traumatic experiences; understand the protective factors; how to build upon protective factors; become aware of strategies that support children and develop their identity, self-esteem, and skills towards self-advocacy. (16 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: 
Parenting Youth Who Have Experienced Trauma
Building Parental Resilience
Parental resilience is critical when caring for a child who has experienced trauma, separation, and loss or grief. These children come to the table with greater than average needs that will require additional support, guidance, patience, understanding, and flexibility. Foster and adoptive parents who come to the table with a high level of parental resilience will have a greater ability to cope with trying situations and will be better able to effectively handle the child’s behaviors that can be challenging. This theme will discuss the importance of self-care for parents who are fostering or adopting as well as practical ideas on how to incorporate it into their daily routines. Parents will learn why maintaining their own mental, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being is so important when caring for children who have experienced trauma, separation or loss. (22 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: 
Developing & Sustaining Healthy & Supportive Relationships With Youth
Continued Connections
Continued Connections targets the honoring of the teens’ former attachments, acknowledges that teens are part of other families and have other relationships, and recognizes that the loyalty and connection to those relationships may be significant. Continued Connections also explores the importance of your relationship with the youth’s birth family and other people who are important to the youth. This theme captures the concept that resource parents may need to move beyond their own discomfort toward prior relationships in order to help the youth grieve losses, maintain connections, confirm their identity, and form healthy attachments with others. (25 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: 
Nurturing Youth's Culture
Family Dynamics
This theme will provide an overview of the impact fostering or adopting can have on family dynamics including the impact on marital relationships, biological children, foster or adoptive children already living in the home and extended family members. Parents who are fostering or adopting will gain insight and increased understanding of how their family may need to adjust, as well as strategies that they can use to support healthy family dynamics. (18 minutes)
(Supplemental video (9 minutes))

Recommended CORE Teen Session: Developing & Sustaining Healthy & Supportive Relationships With Youth
Life Story: Birth and Adoption Story
This theme will help adoptive parents understand the importance of having ongoing conversations with their children about their birth and adoption story. The theme will discuss how empowering children with the missing pieces of their story can help them build trust in family relationships, help with healthy identity formation, and can lead to stronger connections with birth family members. Adoptive parents will learn how to have on-going conversation with their children about their life story that is done in an inclusive, open fashion. (22 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: 
Nurturing Youth's Culture
Managing Placement Transitions
This theme will provide an overview of the impact transitions, both planned and unplanned, has on children who have experienced trauma, loss or separation. The theme will discuss strategies parents can use to make these transitions less traumatic and disruptive. Parents will also learn strategies for making children feel welcomed and connected before, during, and after transitions occur. (14 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: 
Understanding and Managing Youth’s Challenging Behaviors Part 1
Parental Adaptation
Parental Adaptation is based on the idea that youth cannot be parented in the same manner as “traditional” parenting. It targets the thinking and skills parents will need to adjust to assure that their parenting responses successfully respond to the needs of the youth. (23 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: Introduction & Understanding the Impact of Trauma on Youth in Foster Care
Parental Regulation
The purpose of this learning opportunity is to enhance your understanding of parental regulation. Parental Regulation is the set of skills and abilities that help us manage our feelings and behaviors so that we can then use the right skills, interventions and supports at the right time. (21 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: 
Developing & Sustaining Healthy & Supportive Relationships With Youth
Preparing for Adulthood
This theme will provide an overview of the common skills that youth will need to effectively navigate as an adult and provide strategies on how families who are fostering or adopting can prepare youth to successfully transition into adulthood. The theme will highlight the variance that can exist between chronological and developmental age for children who have experienced trauma, separation and loss and how this can impact the transition to adulthood. Some of the challenges that youth may face during this transition will be highlighted. (15 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: Understanding and Managing Youth’s Challenging Behaviors Part 2
Preparing for and Managing Visitation
This theme will provide an overview the importance of children maintaining visits with their family and how to check in and address concerns, questions and emotions children may encounter before and after the visits. The theme will provide strategies on how to help children name and validate the range of feelings they may experience before, during and after a visit and understand the role that parents who are fostering or adopting play in these visits. (13 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: 
Understanding and Managing Youth’s Challenging Behaviors Part 1
Relationship Development
The purpose of this portion of the training is to enhance your learning around relationship development. In this program, relationship development is defined as the critical tasks and skills required to engage, increase commitment and positive connection, and develop a supportive healing relationship between foster caregivers and the youth in their homes. (30 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: 
Developing & Sustaining Healthy & Supportive Relationships With Youth
Responding to Children in Crisis
This theme will highlight some of the difficulties children who have experienced trauma, separation or loss can have in regulating themselves. The theme will review the different phases of crisis and provide parents who are fostering or adopting with strategies to proactively prevent a crisis from occurring. This theme will also review ways to keep the children safe when they are having a crisis and strategies that can help to de-escalate the situation. (15 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: Understanding and Managing Youth’s Challenging Behaviors Part 2
Sensory Integration
This theme will briefly explore how early childhood trauma and neglect may impact a child’s ability to interact successfully with their outside world – sensory integration. This theme will provide parents who are fostering or adopting with the ability to identify behaviors related to sensory integration difficulties and strategies to aid a child with sensory integration challenges in the home, school, and community. (20 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: Understanding and Managing Youth’s Challenging Behaviors Part 2
Sexual Trauma
This theme will provide an overview of some of the emotional needs of children who have been sexually abused. The theme will highlight some of the unique challenges in parenting children who have experienced this type of abuse. The theme will highlight safety measures to put in place to ensure all children in the home are safe. It will also provide information on seeking effective therapy for children who have been sexually abused to minimize risk of re-victimization, minimize risk of children re-enacting abuse on other children and maximize healthy sexual development. (17 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: Understanding and Managing Youth’s Challenging Behaviors Part 2
SOGIE
The purpose of this learning opportunity is to enhance your learning around sexual orientation, gender identity and expression (SOGIE). SOGIE is a term that includes all types of sexual orientation and gender identities and expressions. In this program, the term diverse SOGIE is used to describe youth who are expressing a non-traditional sexual orientation or gender identity, and who need to be supported through their sexual orientation or gender identity exploration with understanding and acceptance. (24 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: Nurturing Youth's Culture
Transitions
A critical element of creating a safe, predictable environment is to ensure smooth transitions for youth. Transitions include moves such as being placed from the birth home into a foster home, moves from one foster home to another, being placed into a group home or treatment setting, moving into an adoptive home or returning to the birth home from foster care. The purpose of this portion of the training is to enhance your learning around transitions. This session focuses on how change impacts the youth, you, and your family. Strategies are introduced to help you prepare for and manage the emotional impact (stress, fear, uncertainty, pain, loneliness, anxiety and hopelessness) that are often a part of the transition process. (25 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: Understanding and Managing Youth’s Challenging Behaviors Part 1
Understanding and Recognizing the Effects of Trauma
The purpose of this learning opportunity is to continue to enhance your understanding and recognition of the effects of trauma and trauma-informed parenting. This session explores how trauma affects the youth’s physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing and introduces the critical framework of "Regulate, Relate, Reason” which will help you remember how to best respond to youth who have been affected by all types of trauma. Trauma informed resource parenting is defined as the framework that includes understanding, recognizing, and responding to the effects of all types of trauma on children and youth in care. (17 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: Introduction & Understanding the Impact of Trauma on Youth in Foster Care
Understanding Behavior
The purpose of this learning opportunity is to further explore how trauma effects youth’s behaviors. The experience of trauma often produces behaviors that will seem out of context and usually includes anger, mistrust or defiance. The experience of trauma can also impact school performance and relationships and can result in delays in and social skills and development. You will explore how the interactions and interventions used with youth who have experienced trauma are different than those used with youth who have not experienced trauma. (25 minutes)

Recommended CORE Teen Session: Parenting Youth Who Have Experienced Trauma