Training Resource Center - Medically Complex Training Program

The Medically Complex Training Program provides initial and ongoing training as well as support to families providing care to children with complex medical needs throughout Kentucky. Foster parents working with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services Department for Community Based Services (DCBS) and private child caring (PCC) agencies, along with DCBS and PCC staff attend Medically Complex training. There are four web-based trainings that serve as prerequisites to the initial medically complex training, Join Hands Together. These include Medically Complex Orientation (2.25 hours), DCBS Standards of Practice for Medically Complex Homes (1 hour), Growth and Development (1 hour) and Nutrition (1 hour). These are required for all families before they attend the one-day classroom training component of Join Hands Together. They are to be completed three weeks prior to attending the scheduled one-day classroom training that provides the remaining 6.75 hours of training credit needed to become a Medically Complex Foster Home. Training credit is assigned only when all of the prerequisites and the in-class portion of Join Hands Together are completed. Certification in infant, child and adult CPR and first aid is still required, along with regional approval, before a foster parent is deemed a Medically Complex Foster Parent. During FY 2019, ten (10) JHT classroom trainings will be delivered to DCBS and PCC foster parents and staff. There are 36 available slots for each training. At the direction of DCBS, those slots are distributed as follows: 12 for PCC foster parents, 12 for DCBS foster parents, 5 for PCC workers, and 7 for DCBS or PCC foster parents who have an exception. During FY 2018, the Medically Complex Training Program within the University of Kentucky’s Training Resource Center will continue to work in conjunction with the DCBS Training Branch and DCBS Division of Protection and Permanency to implement annual ongoing medically complex training events designed to meet the diverse training needs of the state’s medically complex foster parents. Various training topics related to the care of children designated as Medically Complex will be available for participants to choose from to meet training requirements. These two statewide ongoing training events are scheduled in accordance with the recertification needs of the medically complex foster parents (tentatively September and March). All medically complex foster parents will be encouraged to attend the statewide training events. “Make-up” training will be made available for those medically complex foster parents who are unable to attend and who have a child designated as medically complex placed in their care.