We don't do it all, but odds are that we know who does!
Courses and Learning Tools
Online course or webinar format teaching the critical importance of lasting permanency to children and youth. Learn what permanency means, the outcomes for youth that “age out” of the child welfare system without finding lasting permanency and what adoption and permanency can offer to children and youth as well as what permanency families look like.
The Importance of Permanency
A free, in-depth course for anyone who wants to learn more about the science of brain development. Experiences at sensitive periods of development change the brain in ways that increase or decrease risk for later physical and mental illness, including addiction. Created by the University of Oxford, in partnership with the Alberta Family Wellness Initiative, to share knowledge about the science of brain development for families and professionals. This is important information for everybody to understand how our earliest experiences can affect our long-term mental and physical health.
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Videos of more than 30 leading experts in neurobiology and mental health
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Certification in Brain Story science
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19 modules self-paced
Brain Story Certification
Bridge to Belonging is an online training program for church leaders and volunteers to create a worship community where kids from hard places are welcomed, understood and supported. Developed in partnership with the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development, this TBRI-based program is online, geared towards the specific needs of churches, available in a study-at-your-own-pace format and is currently FREE!
Bridge to Belonging
Foster & Adoption Courses:
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Transracial Foster Care & Adoption
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Supporting a Child's Transition to an Adoptive Home
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Healthy Communication With Older Children & Teens
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Infertility & Infant Loss
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Preparing Your Heart & Home
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Creating a Ministry to Biological Parents
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Shared Parenting with Bio Parents in Foster Care
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A Healthy, Merged Stepfamily
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Foster Care & Adoption (CFC)
This course offers an informal, yet thorough approach to Trust-Based Relational Intervention®, an evidence-based intervention for children from hard places of abuse, neglect, and/or trauma.
Over nearly eight hours of instruction guide the viewer through the principles and strategies of TBRI® and offer practical tips for implementation.
TBRI 101 Course
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This 3hr, FREE, mini, self-serve course provides a brief introduction to trauma and how early childhood experiences impact brain development, body, beliefs and behaviour for a lifetime as well as an introduction to TBRI (Trust Based Relational Intervention).
TBRI is a scientifically proven methodology for how we can work with kids (and adults) who have experienced early childhood trauma to help calm and re-wire brains, teach safe, healthy relationships, coping, good choices and bring healing and wholeness as well as handle hard behaviours
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Mini Intro to TBRI
Illuminate is a self-paced course that walks you through 8 topics essential to understanding trauma & building healing relationships.
Created to help busy families understand trauma and how it impacts their kids and families, and give practical tools and resources to help you thrive as a family.
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Each of the eight modules contains:
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30-minute teaching video
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Activities based on the video
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Self-reflection questions
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Additional resources
Register for lifetime access.
Illuminate
Child Development Courses:
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Child Development & Maltreatment
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Caring for a Substance Exposed Infant
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Adoption Identity: Supporting Your Child Over the Life Span
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Helping Parents Understand Sexual Identity Development - Foster Care Edition
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Navigating Adolescent Developmental Stages
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Child Development (CFC Courses)
Trauma Informed Parenting Courses:
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How to Calm Stress Response Emotions
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Common Childhood Diagnoses
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Meeting Internal and External Needs
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Strengthening and Securing Attachments
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Navigating Adolescent Developmental Stages
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Helping Children Addicted to Gaming and Social Media
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Trauma Informed Correction
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Helping Your Child make Right Choices
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Trauma Informed Parenting (CFC)
A 10 Part series on preparing you for things you didn't know you needed preparing for.
This course addresses key foundational principles based on the Gottman Institute's world renowned research on healthy families and what makes couples stick together well.
This is a step in your preparation process you won't want to miss.
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What To Do While You Wait
Hope for the Journey
Fantastic for anyone who interacts with children in any capacity. Held annually each spring. Available as simulcasts around the world.
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Early childhood adverse experiences
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Child & brain development
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Attachment
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Trauma
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Sensory processing
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Trauma/Fear Behaviours
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TBRI methodology
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TBRI implementation
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Show Hope
10 Strategies for Coregulation
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It can be hard to support kids well in moments of correction when their emotions run high. Especially when you're tired, stressed and it is the ten-bazillionth time you're addressing the same behaviour.
Join in the trenches mom, Karen Peters in understanding dysregulation in kids and what to do about it. These 10 strategies in 45-minute couch session should leave you with some extra tools to help your kids with co-regulation.
Thrive Life
Kim Barthel Videos & Training​​
Kim is a registered Occupational Therapist in British Columbia, Ontario and the United States, a clinician with a private practice since 1989, and speaker and teacher who assesses and supports a wide range of clients, often when there is complexity involved. She is an Advanced Neuro-Developmental Treatment Instructor as well as a Sensory Integration Instructor. Kim supports agencies, schools, and businesses to develop trans-disciplinary services and environments for a wide range of individuals with special needs. Her specialties in workshop instruction include Trauma-Sensitive Practice, Pediatric Neuro-Developmental Treatment, Sensory Processing, Attachment Theory, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, Addiction and Mental Health
Kim's Resource Library
Resources to help children heal from trauma. New cutting-edge research, practical skills, and proven trauma-focused strategies available through courses developed by psychologists, clinicians, and counsellors.
Courses include:
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Giving and receiving healing
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How to calm your child's stress response and emotions
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Trauma-focused schools
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10 ways to de-escalate a student's big behaviours
Complex Trauma Resources
Stoplight simplifies complex brain science into a common language. This system provides simple and practical steps that foster emotional engagement, looking beyond behaviours and learning how to manage emotions and build relationships. Materials are aligned with TBRI methodology.
Access:
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The Stoplight Approach
After operating for nearly 25 years as Adoption Learning Partners, a trusted resource for adoptive families and the professionals who support them, StageWise has widened their focus to serve all parents, caregivers and child well-being professionals. Their online learning platform offers on-demand webinars and self-paced courses that are accessible, engaging and deeply informed by research and expert advice. Whether you’re facing everyday parenting struggles or navigating complex emotional or behavioral concerns, their content meets you where you are — and grows with you as your child does.
They are still the partner adoptive families have relied on for decades. That commitment hasn’t changed. What’s new is their mission to support all adults in a child’s life — adoptive or not — because when grownups have the knowledge and confidence to meet their needs, everyone thrives.
StageWise Parenting
Our Services
Links to Canadian Adoption Information
Our Services
Links to Canadian Foster Care Information
Adoption Funding Sources
Adoptions of children who are already in the Canadian child welfare system typically have little to no cost and are eligible for post-adoption assistance funding.
However, private and international adoptions can carry a steep price tag and often do not qualify for the same post-adoption assistance services.
Financial grants for Canadian, Christian, adopting couples
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Supporting Canadian churches to start adoption funds
National Bank of Canada provides information on loans and options to finance adoptions
Eligible adoption expenses can be claimed for your Canadian taxes.
This government of Canada page on income tax explains adoption tax credits
A one time $6,000 government subsidy for private adoptions in families with a household income less than $180,000 a year
Adoption assistance (also known as adoption subsidy) helps adoptive families access medical care, counseling or therapy, special equipment, tutoring programs, and other supports that help them raise their children who have been in foster care. There is no national adoption assistance program in Canada
Subsidies are available for children adopted from government care for eligible families with combined net family income of $97,856 or less. Supports are also available for children with specific special needs
This foundation is located in the USA but does support Canadian families!
Open to citizens of the U.S. and Canada adopting domestically, including through foster care, this grant offers up to $10,000 to cover final adoption costs.
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General Financial Supports
Grants for families to access essential, specialized medical equipment, therapies and programs for at-risk youth with physical, mental and social challenges living in BC
Financial support to parents and guardians to help pay for the extraordinary costs of caring for a child with a disability.
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medical equipment,
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medical transportation,
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incontinence supplies,
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costs that exceed typical child care such as day-care or after-school program aids,
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relief care,
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home support services,
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family support workers for social inclusion activities and skill-building,
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support for therapeutic-based recreation activities, and
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a health card (for families without health insurance.)
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This page provides a comprehensive list of autism-related funding by province in Canada
Helps families plan, coordinate and access services to raise a child with disabilities including:
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coordinating and getting supports
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clothing or footwear related to the child’s disability
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counselling
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child care supports
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help with some of the costs to take your child to medical appointments such as parking, mileage, meals, accommodation and sibling care
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respite services in or outside your home
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aides who provide personal care, community, behavioural or developmental support
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help with some costs for medications, prescribed diets, ambulance or medical supplies​
Grants for:
- Adaptive and Mobility
Equipment,
- Mental Wellness,
- Private Assessments,
- Specialized Therapies,
- Tuition & Tutoring,
- Type 1 Diabetes Support
Grants covering enrollment costs in any enrichment program of their choice within their own communities (over multiple years). It also covers the costs of related clothing and equipment and gives them a level playing field with their peers. In supports of children in child welfare services across Canada.
Post Secondary Financial Supports
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An interactive map of Canada with lists of post secondary financial supports (scholarships and bursaries) available to kids with experience in the Canadian child welfare system!
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A great starting point for the post-secondary education journey. This site has resources from Options for finishing high school to Finding scholarships and bursaries.
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The BC Foster Parents website also has a helpful listing of financial assistant sources from camp for younger kids to post secondary scholarships and bursaries as well as medical travel grants!
Practical Tools & Programs
These are some programs and resources that we love:
Online Learning Platform
Hope for the Journey equips parents and caregivers with the practical tools and understanding to build connection and trust with their children and teens who have experienced relational trauma, empowering them to thrive inside and outside their home. The training lays the foundation for how early, adverse, childhood experiences impact children's brain development, bodies and behaviours and how to effectively work with these children. The material includes research-based tools to promote attachment and connection in families such as Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) methods developed by Drs. Karyn Purvis and David Cross at the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development at TCU. TBRI is a care model designed to help meet relational and developmental needs of children and youth impacted by trauma.
Outreach and Mentoring Program
"Most of the women I’ve met on the streets and in the brothels of Western cities haven’t come from far away, impoverished villages on the other side of the globe, like we so often hear or imagine. They started in foster care. The stats are alarming: 70-80% of street and indoor prostituted people trafficked in America come from “the system.”
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BRAVE is a campaign that invites God’s people to reach out to the most vulnerable girls with a message of empowerment in every community across the Western world.
Adult & Child Small Group Curriculums
It can be hard to know how to respond well to our child’s trauma, grief, and loss. Even the most prepared, compassionate parent shouldn’t bear the weight of this pain alone. And you weren’t designed to.
You need a supportive community of fellow parents that you can share “same here” moments with. And your children deserve friends and safe adults who understand their experience. Replanted groups provide both. When you join a group, you and your children get the consistent support you need to heal, connect, and thrive as a family.
In Replanted groups, you can enjoy connecting with other parents knowing your children are also getting the emotional support, community, and care they deserve in a safe, fun environment.