We just got home from Denver where we took our CORE foster parent training. It was 12hours and it's supposed to cover the basics to get you ready for fostering. CORE training is offered almost everywhere and I don't exactly recommend taking it at the Lowry Family Center in Denver. The trainers were kind and passionate people but I really don't feel as prepared after the training as I thought I would. They covered many "emotional" basics which I am grateful for. But, they really strayed too far away from the course material and did not cover enough of the factual, step by step information. Maybe they've been doing this a long time and they have learned that the emotional stuff is much more valuable and the other stuff you will figure out when it actually happens and/or when you read your manual.
Thankfully I did walk away with a manual (full of typos and misspellings) that I can read and get up to speed on my own. But I do feel that those trainers need to get back on track. They told way too many personal stories, which got us behind and then they even cut the class an hour early. I wrote them an honest evaluation and left it at that.
On a more postive note, the people there for the training were really diverse and it was interesting to hear why they were getting into fostering. I was happy to hear that all ages of kids were "wanted", even teenagers and kids with special needs! There was one single lady there that only wanted kids aged 16-18! Wow! And one guy who had already been placed with a deaf girl. It really was inspiring and I was quite relieved to see that not everyone wanted the same easy age group we did.
Now to wait and see if we hear anything about little man this week...
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