Strength, Trauma, and Resilience Studies
STARS is available to all Child Welfare Case Managers and Child Welfare Protective Investigators in Florida!
STARS provides concrete tools for growing child, parental, and family resilience.
This advanced certification includes 12-18 hours of self-paced, online course content with two virtual, synchronous sessions with a university faculty member to practice and reinforce learned skills. Participants will have additional opportunities to connect with peers and a coach.
Developed with input from DCF leadership, lead agency representatives, case management service representatives, and other stakeholders for child welfare professionals, STARS is a university-led, evidence-based, trauma-informed, engaging workforce resilience training that will motivate, educate, and improve the skills of the child welfare workforce to improve child safety.
The course material addresses coping, stress management, secondary trauma, and primary trauma, as well as explores how trauma history interferes with learning. Participants build better resilience skills for families.
The STARS Advanced Certification:
Note: MyALIGN Advanced Certification courses are advanced professional certifications issued by the Florida Institute for Child Welfare at Florida State University.
Earning a certificate in an Advanced Certification course does not replace the mandatory child welfare credential issued by the Florida Certification Board as required by statute 402.40. As a reminder, Section 402.40, F.S. requires that “each person providing child welfare services in this state earns and maintains a professional certification from a professional credentialing entity that is approved by the Department of Children and Families.” The Florida Certification Board is the professional credentialing entity approved by the Department to certify child welfare service providers.
Eligibility
Eligible participants include Child Welfare Case Managers and Child Welfare Protective Investigators who have finished pre-service training. STARS is recommended for those with less than 5 years of professional experience. Other child welfare direct service providers are encouraged to apply as well.
Application Process
The application consists of three parts: participant acknowledgement, supervisor acknowledgement, and responses to two reflection questions. For full details, please see the application page.
Stay Informed
Meet Our Facilitator & Coach
Carol Campbell Edwards, LCSW, (she/her), is the BSW Program and Professional Development Program Director at the Florida State University College of Social Work. In addition to leadership and teaching responsibilities, Carol chairs the College’s Student Affairs Committee and serves on the Faculty Affairs Committee and the Student Advisory Committee.
Stephen McGarvey joined the Florida Institute for Child Welfare as a Competency and Skills Development Coach in August 2024. He received a BSW from Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, and immediately moved to Florida.
Course Outline
The AdCert includes six self-paced, online course chapters with two virtual, synchronous sessions with a university faculty member to practice and reinforce learned skills (four hours per session).
This module introduces learners to the Advanced Certification course and provides a training overview and instructions for navigating the course through the ALIGN Learning Portal.
- Explain the importance of the child welfare professionals’ role in working with personsaffected by trauma
- Identify how cultural, social, and environmental factors influence children’s and adult experience of trauma
- Define different types of trauma
- Describe polyvictimization in children
- Examine the impact of trauma on children, parenting, and family relationships
- Explain Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
- Discuss how the Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) can encourage healthy child development
- Describe the public health approach to preventing and addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
- Identify the therapeutic options and child welfare interventions for helping clients who recover from Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
- Use trauma-sensitive methods of communication to increase the likelihood of shared understanding between client and professional
- Describe basic strategies of motivational interviewing
- Identify the differences between sympathy and empathy
- List the guiding principles of trauma-informed care for child welfare service systems
- Identify ways to improve partnership and collaboration across systems
The first synchronous training session will focus on practicing trauma-informed communication skills and motivational interviewing.
- Describe typical workplace stressors
- Define and recognize the impact of and primary and vicarious/secondary trauma, burnout, and compassion fatigue
- Identify risk and protective factors for primary trauma, and vicarious/secondary trauma, burnout, and compassion fatigue
- Identify new skills, including coping strategies and self-care, to prevent and address workplace stress
- List steps that leadership can take to improve response to workplace stress
- Define and Describe Characteristics of Resilience
- Identify steps to engage in successful partnerships with families that elevate voices of children, youth, and families
- Identify strength-based approaches that build physical and psychological safety of children, youth, and families
- Learn the six protective factors that build resilience in children, youth and families and help them heal from trauma
- Identify steps to deliver services and social supports to children, youth and families that promote resilience
- Examine the factors that help children, youth, and families with posttraumatic growth
- Examine various research-based stress management techniques
- Learn how each stress management technique works to improve functioning and increase resilience
- Learn to practice each technique
- Understand how stress management techniques can be provided to clients to help build resilience skills
- Understand how such techniques can be used by child welfare staff to help build resilience skills
The second synchronous training will focus on practicing skills for successful engagement with and building safety for children, youth, and families; assessing and preventing secondary traumatization in child welfare staff and practicing tools that build resilience for clients and child welfare staff.
