Through our Professional Education activities, we aim to reach parents through the professionals who support them. Invest in Kids brings the most current science and practice to professionals, enhances their skills - and thus their effectiveness - and builds community capacity. We develop original curricula or fully customize existing material as required to meet the unique needs of specific groups of professionals.
Core Training of Family Home Visitors
This five-day session focuses on building the knowledge and skills of basic home visitation, values and beliefs, and gaining practical strategies for reaching, engaging and supporting hard to reach families. The training will increase the home visitor’s awareness and knowledge of child abuse, duty to report, establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries and developing a range of skills necessary to work with at-risk families with young children. Find out more
Training the Trainers of Postpartum Nurse Home Visitors
This two-day Institute supports nurses who train other nurses to deliver postpartum home visits. The Public Health Nurse's role as trainer and content expert is facilitated through the use of a comprehensive curriculum that addresses issues related to postpartum care of the mother and infant, the family's transition, and other concerns that the family may have. Find out more
Home Visiting for Professionals Working with High Risk Families
This five-day Institute is designed for those professionals who use home-based interventions in their work with young children and their families considered to be high risk. The training blends current research and practice to increase the skills and knowledge of professionals in the areas of child development, screening and assessment, parent-child relationships, intervention strategies, practical strategies for reaching, engaging and supporting families, parental mental health and working in an interdisciplinary context. Find out more
Working with High Risk Families in Child Care Settings
This three-day Institute is designed for early childhood educators working with high risk families and their young children in child care centres. Professionals will enhance their skills and knowledge of early intervention and prevention strategies within the context of the child care setting and the opportunities and limitations such a setting offers. This Institute blends current research and practice and explores such topics as risk and protective factors, child development, centre-based intervention strategies, cultural sensitivity, observation, screening and assessment and implications for daily programming for groups of children. Find out more
Strategies for Supporting Families and Children
This one-day Institute familiarizes participants with strategies to enhance the numerous parenting capacities called upon to nurture a child's development. This training is for practitioners who focus on maximizing the guide’s effectiveness as a planning and recording tool as well as a vehicle to support parenting capacities, knowledge and skills. Find out more
The Ounce Scale Practitioner Training
This two-day training introduces professionals to the Ounce Scale (2003), which was developed as a functional assessment measure from birth to age 3½ years. Participants will learn about the three components of the Ounce Scale (the Observation Record, the Family Album, and the Developmental Profile), and will have hands-on experience applying each component to a case study child. Find out more
Training the Trainers of Family Home Visitors
This three-day Institute focuses on building the knowledge and skills of those professionals training family home visitors. The professional's role as a trainer and content expert is examined simultaneously using a comprehensive curriculum that addresses recruitment, training and supervision of experienced community people to provide in-home services for at-risk families. The curriculum enhances the capacity for professionals to deliver a family home visiting program. Find out more