Kids to Love offers TIPS Classes Online

Kids to Love makes it easier than ever for people to become foster parents in the state of Alabama by bringing essential TIPS training online.

Anyone in the state who is looking to foster or adopt can take online TIPS classes through Kids to Love. TIPS, or Trauma Informed Partnering for Safety, is a requirement for foster parents in the state of Alabama. It teaches them what to expect when opening their homes to foster children and how to act and react to their children’s needs.

New foster parents receiving TIPS classes at the Kids to Love facility.

The Importance of TIPS

“It’s really a program to educate them on what it’s like to be a foster parent, the challenges they’ll face, how to deal with children who have faced traumas in their past and help them prevent new traumas from happening,” said Sabrina Hammond, a case manager in Kids to Love’s Child Placing Agency and one of the agency’s TIPS instructors.

Kids to Love become a licensed child placing agency in Alabama in 2021. As a licensed agency, Kids to Love’s team members can certify foster parents and place children in loving homes. The need for more foster parents is great; there are almost 6,000 children in foster care across Alabama, and only approximately 2,300 foster homes.

The online TIPS training will allow people from anywhere in the state of Alabama to get certified, no matter where they live. More families with foster certification can help keep children out of group homes and instead, they live with a family that can show them what a healthy family environment should be.

“We want them to know what it looks like to have healthy parents, how to love on children, how to accept love — because a lot of them don’t know how to accept the love that’s given to them — and to just turn them into healthy citizens,” Hammond said.

TIPS classes are one three-hour session a week for 10 weeks.

Anyone interested in fostering or adopting a child can visit the Kids to Love website.