We know raising a child takes a village, but with rising social isolation, it can be harder than ever. Meanwhile, we know that social support is essential to promoting child safety and family wellbeing - a key factor in preventing child abuse. Still, when a child is removed from the home, child welfare-involved families may face challenges in building and maintaining their village. Shared parenting is an intentional practice approach to help families maintain
relationships and expand social support during and after child removal.

In this training we will discuss how to conceptualize and operationalize shared parenting to enhance social support for child welfare-involved families. Though often confused with coparenting, shared parenting is a way that kinship caregivers or foster parents can collaborate with parents to promote normalcy, share knowledge, enhance parenting skills, and maintain family connections.

Participants in this continuing education class will leave with a broader understanding of how shared parenting can be implemented in a variety of families with different strengths and needs. Practice approaches such as writing shared parenting agreements and developing social support maps will be reviewed in the course. Finally, a panel of practitioners involved in implementing shared parenting will share their experiences.

CONTINUING EDUCATION: Attendees can obtain 3 social work CECH’s upon completion of the training, payment receipt and passing of the post-training quiz. A CECH certificate will be available for download upon completion of the aforementioned items.

COST: Free to all MDHHS workers and MDHHS contracted private agencies; $30 all others. 

All attendees must RSVP for this training. Attendees will receive the Zoom link via email upon completion of the RSVP and payment.