Our courses are funded by Oranga Tamariki (Ministry for Children) if you receive your allowance from Oranga Tamariki or Work and Income, or if you don’t receive any funding, they are currently FREE. This includes whānau/kin caregivers, grandparents raising grandchildren, and permanent caregivers.

If you receive your allowance from another agency, our courses cost $25.00 + gst which is payable by your agency.

Please click here if you are unsure if training is free or not. (For more information on understanding the training registration pathway for you.)

We are forever learning, and we certainly didn’t get a manual when we had our own children. Some of us learned through trial and error, and parented the way our caregivers parented us. Thanks to the science available, we now know how the brain develops and what we can do to build healthy brains.

All children who come into care have developmental trauma to some degree. They have missed some of the nurturing they needed in their early years, and so the architecture of their brain has been impacted. To heal our tamariki we need to change our traditional parenting to become more therapeutic. Our training will give you the therapeutic skills you need to build the relationship and help your child heal.

Have a look at our Training Framework at the bottom of this page. We recommend new caregivers start at the Foundational Level. Not all courses are ready yet, but we are releasing new courses all the time. Currently, the training we have available all falls into the Foundational Level.

Eventually our Training will be broken down into three levels;

1. Foundational
2. Intermediate
3. Advanced

Each level has three tiers to it, with each tier containing four courses. Once you have finished a tier you will receive an email confirming completion of the tier. On completion of all 12 courses in a level, plus two additional courses, you will receive a Caring Families Aotearoa certificate.

If you’re having problems accessing the Reach 360 training platform or beginning your training, or you’re worried about the technical side, please just call us for support. We can talk you through it so you feel confident to get underway. Call 0800 693 323 for some friendly guidance.  

Yes, but we recommend you do not register for more than 3 courses per month. Check first the estimated completion time for each course to ensure you are able to finish them by the due date.

Yes. Our Regional Coordinators can deliver our online courses, face-to-face to a group. We consider all requests on a case-by-case basis.

We would ideally like to have a minimum of six participants in a group. Please contact our Training Coordinator HERE to enquire.

We recognise that many caregivers prefer face-to-face training. Unfortunately, we are a small team, operating on a limited budget, so do not currently have the capacity to deliver all our training courses in person across the country like we used to.  

We hope that our new self-directed online learning makes it easier for our caregivers to complete a course in the comfort of their own home, at their own pace.

The key information from our old courses has been broken down into smaller chunks and we will are releasing them incrementally. 

We do not issue certificates after every course. On completion of all 12 courses in a level, plus two additional courses, you will receive a Caring Families Aotearoa certificate.

If you require a record of the training you have completed with Caring Families Aotearoa, please contact us by emailing  training@caringfamilies.org.nz or phone 0800 693 323.