Services delivered: child welfare education services

Component: provincial initiatives

Legislation: Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017 (CYFSA)

Service objectives

To provide education and training to children’s aid society (society) staff as well as to alternate caregivers (e.g., foster parents, kinship caregivers, out of home care staff), prospective adoptive parents, private practitioners and caregivers, and community professionals as required, to improve outcomes for children, youth, and families.

Service description

• The Child Welfare Education Services program is a comprehensive training program structured to enable access to an appropriate range of curriculum modules for society trainers, society staff at all levels, foster, kinship care, prospective adoptive parents, private practitioners and community professionals as identified in service objectives and budgets agreed upon between the Ministry and the transfer payment recipient
• Training is delivered through a regional or society-based delivery system, supported by an integrated learning platform with current technology, to minimize travel, meal and accommodation costs incurred by the trainers, trainees and their societies.
• The transfer payment recipient delivers the Child Welfare Education Services program, undertakes curriculum development/revision and creates and delivers new training courses in response to needs identified by the child welfare sector and the Ministry’s policy goals and objectives, as required; agreed upon between the Ministry and the transfer payment recipient staff and as per agreed upon service objectives and budgets
• The transfer payment recipient maintains copyright and ownership of the curricula in the Child Welfare Education Services Program. Any revisions/additions to the curriculum which include third party material must have the permission of the author and/or publisher and will be obtained by the transfer payment recipient

Program/service features

The services are directed at child welfare professionals, managers and resource families to help educate and equip them to serve children, youth and families in the Ontario child welfare system.

The program will

• Provide education and training programs that lead to practical and action- oriented knowledge about child welfare in Ontario, playing a vital role in creating reflective child welfare professionals, innovative leaders, and strong resource families (e.g., society and Outside Paid Resource (OPR) foster parents, kinship caregivers, prospective adoptive parents) across the province
• Provide child welfare professionals, managers and resource families with the tools necessary to make critical decisions about child safety while simultaneously working alongside families towards better outcomes for children
• Deliver a structured training program to societies to support consistency and quality service delivery by child welfare professionals to children, youth, families and resource parents
• Develop knowledge, skills and competency of child welfare professionals at all levels (new child welfare professionals, authorized child protection workers, supervisors, managers, executive leaders) and resource caregivers (e.g., foster parents, kinship caregivers, prospective adoptive parents) to provide high-quality child welfare services to children, youth and their families
• Provide a supportive learning environment for direct service child welfare professionals (both authorized child protection workers and new staff seeking authorization) and supervisors to acquire knowledge about child welfare practices to improve the delivery of child welfare services
• Support greater consistency in service delivery through a number of diverse training curricula to help societies and caregivers build capacity and promote child safety and wellbeing

The program/services contracted by the ministry will reflect the following features.

Program goals

• Provide child welfare staff (frontline workers, supervisors, managers) and resource families with the required knowledge, skills and learning tools to develop their capacity to serve children, families and communities
• Develop the competencies of child welfare professionals, managers and resource families to make critical decisions about child safety to achieve better outcomes for children

Services will be

• Reflective and responsive to child/youth, family and community strengths and needs
• Accountable to the child/youth, family and community
• Sensitive to the social, linguistic and cultural diversity of families and Indigenous communities
• Staffed by individuals with the appropriate range of skills and abilities necessary to effectively develop and deliver training to meet the needs of children, youth and families

Ministry expectations

The transfer payment recipient must

• Promote the Child Welfare Education Services program and identify where training may be needed within the child welfare sector that aligns with ministry policies, priorities and direction
• Deliver/organize the delivery/administration of the training programs listed below, as well as any new programs or educational and training opportunities, as per ministry direction, as required across the province
• Continue to expand/deliver the PRIDE pre-service training program to all foster parents in Ontario, including OPR foster parents
• Register and enroll up to 500 OPR foster parents per year for the PRIDE pre-service training program
• Develop new courses and revise current courses to reflect up-to-date child welfare practices, as needed. The content of the curricula will be contemporary, diverse and relevant to the field of child welfare professionals and caregivers
• Courses to be developed and revised will be determined and agreed with by the Ministry in the fiscal year
• Structure training delivery to enable access to the full range of curriculum models to trainers, staff and other designated professionals and resource parents that include foster (including OPR foster parents as agreed with the ministry), kinship care, customary care and adoptive parents across Ontario
• Support staff in Indigenous agencies in the provision of training, including mentoring and coaching
• Ensure the child welfare education services program is delivered by qualified trainers and where possible, be delivered in a community-based format
• Continue to partner with other child serving agencies to ensure the content of the child welfare education services program is meaningful. Maintain and update as necessary an enterprise learning system to track and report on training attendance. This includes, providing societies with access to reporting functionality for the purposes of identifying completed training related to their agency by worker name, course, and completion date
• Deliver the child welfare curricula through a combination of classroom style training and web-based training. Courses will be compliant with all legislations and industry standards
• Deliver the services in accordance with the ministry approved budget
• Ensure forecasted spending for each budget line is allocated based on realistic monthly/quarterly projections of the work to be completed
• Continue identifying subject matter experts from the sector and creating a structure to organize the online posting of emerging child welfare issues, topics and trends
• Continue developing a Trainer Professional Development OACAS Learning Talks Series to continue building trainer capacity and utilize the Learning Management System to deploy training content
• Facilitate society-based training where qualified trainers exist. The OACAS will recruit, train, support and evaluate a sufficient number of trainers to deliver approved training programs from within the child welfare field and subject matter experts and trainers external to the field
• Hold the Ontario license for SAFE and PRIDE (Pre-service and In-service)
• Communicate quarterly with Ministry staff with respect to reports, present findings, review outcomes and achievements
• Provide to the ministry, upon request, a detailed breakdown of spending within budget lines
• Participate on any advisory or steering committee, as may be constituted by the ministry, to support the delivery, evaluation and content of the child welfare training program
• Deliver the following learning activities and associated number of training sessions and training days as agreed with the Ministry
  • Foundations of child welfare practice
  • Advanced child welfare practice
  • Management and leadership
  • Specialized child welfare practice
  • Resource families
  • Trainer development
  • Mental health training
• Build a learning culture within the child welfare sector by: administering a survey with agencies about organizational learning culture to identify organizational developmental needs; administering a survey to workers to evaluate post-learning impacts; and design and develop OACAS supports to develop and build capacity of staff and foster strong organizational learning cultures
• Work collaboratively with societies to build capacity and provide responsive support, including knowledge dissemination to society management teams; observation, mentoring and approval of society-based and sessional trainers; and promotion of society-based training programs in all program streams and provision of support related to these initiatives
• Engage in Quality Assurance efforts designed to ensure existing content in its course catalogue is adjusted to remain accurate and consistent with provincial child welfare directions, OACAS’s strategic plan, provincial and national social justice efforts and in particular to combat Anti-Black Racism, support Truth and Reconciliation, and efforts in other sectors focused on improving social justice and well-being for all children, youth and families

Reporting requirements

The transfer payment recipient is expected to monitor and evaluate program performance and to confirm that program objectives and deliverables are being met.

At each reporting period, a service data report on the program objectives, services, and targeted outcomes. The report should also include an explanation where there is a variance between the approved budget and actual expenditure for all budget lines as agreed with the ministry. On an annual basis, provide the following

• Activity summary by training category (a summary of activity, for each training category, by region, OACAS zone and society It will display the completion status by number of learners by course title)
• Copies of new and revised Education curricula completed; and
• The most up-to-date copies of the SAFE and PRIDE licenses

The following service data will be reported on at an Interim and Final stage. Please refer to your final agreement for report back due dates and targets.