(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds has signed a bill into law that changes the required training foster parents must complete before they’re licensed by the state. “This bill was largely driven by foster parents who, after going through the training, expressed some frustration with a process that seemed outdated, overly burdensome…rather focused on preparing families and, again, matching children sooner and more effectively,” Reynolds says. Iowa law has required 30 hours of training, a process that takes about nine months to complete.
The new law allows training to be tailored to the individual and a top state official someone is likely to become a licensed foster care parents in three or four months. Janee Harvey is director of the Division of Family Well-Being and Protection in the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services. “We no longer need to make a wannabe foster care parent who’s a nurse…have to take CPR anymore. Somebody who might be a clinical social worker, so maybe has some professional skills that transfer into being a foster parent, we can modify that curriculum,” Harvey said.
“The other area where we’re going to see significant change: some people want to be a foster parent to teens, some maybe want to do that for an infant.” And in those cases, training modules will be directly related to the children they intend to care for. Harvey says about half of the 33-hundred Iowa children in foster care today have either been placed with a relative or with someone the child knows, like a neighbor or a family friend.
The governor says Iowa still has more children in need of foster homes than it has foster families ready to receive them and the new law focuses on competency. “These updates will support stronger recruitment and retention of high quality foster parents,” Reynolds said, “and that is exactly the goal.” The bill passed the Senate in February and cleared the House in early March. A few of the Republican legislators involved in developing the policy attended today’s (Tuesday’s) bill signing ceremony in the governor’s office.
