A 6-Week Fully Virtual Foster Parent Training Program
Program Overview
A.I.Ming for SucceSSful Fostering is a six-week, fully virtual training program designed to support foster parents caring for Indigenous youth whose lives have been shaped by trauma, loss, disrupted attachment, and cultural disconnection. Many Indigenous children enter care carrying experiences that extend far beyond individual family circumstances, reflecting broader histories of displacement, systemic harm, and repeated disruptions to identity and belonging.
This program was created to equip foster parents with the understanding and relational tools needed to respond to these realities with clarity, patience, and respect. Rather than focusing on behavior management or compliance, A.I.Ming for SucceSSful Fostering centers on understanding behavior as communication and survival, and caregiving as a relational responsibility grounded in safety, dignity, and trust.
A Different Approach to Foster Parenting
Traditional foster parent training often emphasizes rules, consequences, and control. While structure has a place, it is rarely sufficient for Indigenous youth whose nervous systems have been shaped by chronic stress, loss, and broken trust with systems and caregivers.
This program offers a different path. It teaches foster parents to slow down, regulate themselves first, and interpret behavior through a trauma- and culture-informed lens. Participants learn how to move away from power struggles and reactive cycles, and toward caregiving that is steady, intentional, and human.
At the heart of the program is the understanding that healing does not occur through compliance, but through consistent, safe relationships where youth feel seen, respected, and understood.
Program Format
A.I.Ming for SucceSSful Fostering is delivered entirely online, allowing foster parents to engage from wherever they are, without sacrificing depth or connection. The program combines live virtual sessions with guided learning, real-world examples, and reflective practice. All content is accessible by phone, tablet, or computer, making it adaptable to the realities of foster parenting schedules.
What the 6 Weeks Cover
Week 1 – Understanding Trauma as Survival
The program begins by reframing how foster parents understand behavior. Rather than viewing challenging behaviors as defiance or manipulation, participants learn to recognize them as survival responses shaped by past experiences. This week explores how trauma impacts emotional regulation, attachment, learning, and stress responses, particularly for Indigenous youth who may have experienced repeated losses and disruptions.
Participants learn to:
- Identify trauma-driven behaviors and triggers
- Understand escalation patterns and emotional dysregulation
- Shift from blame-based thinking to curiosity and understanding
Week 2 – Humanized, De-Institutionalized Care
This week supports foster parents in moving away from control-based, system-driven caregiving and toward humanized, healing focused care. Many children in care have learned to survive in environments where compliance mattered more than understanding. This module helps caregivers begin seeing the child behind the behavior rather than responding only to the behavior itself.
Foster parents learn how to create a home that feels safe, calm, and therapeutic, where dignity, predictability, and emotional safety come first. Emphasis is placed on how caregiver presence and regulation shape a child’s ability to trust, settle, and engage. Central to this week is the shift toward conversation over consequence, using dialogue, curiosity, and understanding as the primary response rather than punishment or escalation.
Rather than relying on control or consequences, participants learn to:
- Recognize and reduce institutional caregiving habits
- Understand behavior as communication and adaptation
- Use conversation to guide behavior instead of punishment
- Create emotionally safe, non-punitive home environments
- Restore dignity, choice, and connection
Week 3 – Cultural Sensitivity and Identity-Informed Care
For Indigenous youth, separation from culture, community, and identity can deepen trauma, disrupt attachment, and erode trust with caregivers and systems. Culture is not an accessory to care. It is a core protective factor that shapes how a child understands safety, belonging, and self-worth. This week supports foster parents in developing a deeper understanding of how culture, identity, and history influence a child’s behavior, emotional responses, and capacity to trust.
Participants are guided to reflect on their own assumptions and learn how to approach care with cultural humility rather than certainty or correction. Emphasis is placed on recognizing the impact of identity disruption within foster care and understanding how disconnection from family, community, and cultural continuity can show up as grief, anger, withdrawal, or resistance.
Participants explore:
- Cultural humility versus assumption and savior-based thinking
- The emotional and behavioral impact of identity disruption in foster care
- Ways to support belonging, pride, and cultural safety respectfully
- How to integrate cultural respect into everyday caregiving without appropriation or tokenism
Culture is approached not as a checklist or requirement, but as a living, ongoing part of a child’s well-being. Foster parents learn how to support identity in ways that are respectful, responsive, and guided by the child’s needs, pace, and lived experience rather than system expectations.
Week 4 – Rapport Building and Beginning Therapeutic Dialogue
Trust cannot be rushed. Many Indigenous youth in care have learned to protect themselves by staying guarded or emotionally distant. This week focuses on building rapport slowly and authentically, while introducing therapeutic-style dialogue that supports expression without pressure.
Foster parents learn how to:
- Build trust through consistency and attunement
- Listen without fixing, interrogating, or minimizing
- Use reflective language and open-ended questions
- Stay connected during moments of conflict or withdrawal
Week 5 – A.I.Ming (Action, Intention, Motivation)
This week introduces the A.I.M Model, a structured framework for understanding behavior beneath the surface. Foster parents learn to steady themselves and interpret what they are seeing before responding.
The A.I.M Model helps caregivers explore:
- Action – What behavior is occurring
- Intention – What the behavior is trying to accomplish
- Motivation – The foundational cause producing said behavior
A.I.M becomes a practical, repeatable tool that supports thoughtful, regulated responses in everyday fostering moments.
Week 6 – The Three S’s of SucceSSful Intervention
The final week focuses on translating understanding into effective, long-term intervention. Foster parents learn how to move beyond crisis management and support lasting growth using the Three S’s of SucceSSful Intervention:
- Stabilize – Restore safety and regulation
- Scaffold – Provide structured support and skill-building
- Supersede – Support internalized change and independence
This framework ensures caregivers are not stuck managing behavior indefinitely, but are actively helping youth develop self-regulation, confidence, and resilience.
A Path Toward Safer, More Respectful Care
A.I.Ming for SucceSSful Fostering is not about fixing children or correcting behavior. It is about equipping adults to show up differently, with awareness instead of reaction, humility instead of authority, and steadiness instead of control. When caregivers shift how they understand and respond, the entire caregiving environment changes.
Through this program, foster parents learn how to become a consistent source of safety rather than stress, and understanding rather than enforcement. They gain the ability to slow moments down, interpret behavior through lived experience and identity, and respond in ways that protect dignity while supporting growth. These shifts may seem small, but for Indigenous youth who have experienced repeated loss, misinterpretation, and instability, they are life changing.
By grounding care in understanding, cultural respect, and healing focused frameworks, this program supports the creation of homes where Indigenous youth feel seen rather than managed, respected rather than corrected, and supported rather than controlled. Homes where trust can grow, identity is honored, and safety is felt rather than demanded.
