Foster Care Training Online in Saskatchewan: PRIDE Options and What's Available Remotely

Saskatchewan requires approximately 30 hours of PRIDE pre-service training before you can be licensed as a foster parent. If you're in Saskatoon or Regina, attending in-person sessions is straightforward. If you're in Meadow Lake, Hudson Bay, or anywhere in the north, the question of online or remote delivery matters practically.

What the PRIDE Training Requirement Covers

PRIDE stands for Parent Resources for Information, Development and Education. It's a structured curriculum that prepares caregivers for the realities of fostering — trauma-informed parenting, child development after adversity, supporting birth family relationships, and cultural competency for the Indigenous children who make up over 80% of Saskatchewan's in-care population.

The 30-hour curriculum is broken into modules typically delivered over several evenings or weekend sessions. It's co-facilitated by an MSS social worker and an experienced foster parent, which provides both the procedural information and the real-world perspective.

This is not the same as the adoption-focused PRIDE program described for prospective adoptive parents. Foster care PRIDE has a different emphasis — it covers attachment and temporary placement dynamics more explicitly, and it spends more time on the foster parent's role within the MSS case team.

What's Available Online or Remotely

Saskatchewan has been expanding blended and remote delivery options for PRIDE, particularly in response to the province's geography. The short answer is: some delivery exists online, but there are limits.

MSS Regional Delivery: Your regional MSS office is the first point of contact. When you express interest in fostering, they'll inform you of current training schedules in your area. In smaller regional centres (Prince Albert, North Battleford, Yorkton, La Ronge), sessions are offered less frequently than in Saskatoon or Regina.

Online and Blended Options: The Ministry has been developing options for applicants in remote communities where in-person attendance would require significant travel. Whether online delivery is available in your specific region is a question for your regional office — the availability has changed over time and varies by region.

The SFFA as a Resource: The Saskatchewan Foster Families Association (SFFA) at 1-800-667-7002 can tell you what delivery options currently exist in your area. They know which regions have online cohorts running and which require travel. Contacting them early is especially important for rural and northern applicants.

First Aid and CPR: A Separate Requirement

Beyond PRIDE, all foster parents must hold valid Standard First Aid and CPR (Level C) certification before licensing. This is always in-person — CPR cannot be certified remotely.

Accepted providers include the Canadian Red Cross, St. John Ambulance, and the Saskatchewan Health Authority. Recertification is required periodically. If you're in a northern or remote community, check with the Saskatchewan Health Authority about scheduled First Aid sessions in your area.

Ongoing Training After Approval

PRIDE pre-service training is the entry requirement, not the ceiling. After licensing, foster parents in Saskatchewan are expected to continue their professional development through:

• Annual SFFA conferences
• Local SFFA support group meetings
• Specialized training modules on topics like Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), managing aggressive behavior, understanding sexual exploitation and trafficking, and supporting youth in the justice system

The SFFA has been expanding its online training library, which is particularly useful for rural foster parents who can't easily attend in-person events. Their website (sffa.sk.ca) and member newsletter (the SFFA Advisor) are the most current sources for what's available.

Why In-Person Training Has Genuine Value

There's a case for attending in-person training even if a blended or online option is available.

PRIDE is partly informational — it covers content you need to know. But it's also experiential. The discussions, the questions from other applicants, the stories from the experienced foster parent co-facilitator, and the frank conversations about what fostering is actually like cannot be fully replicated in a recorded module.

Many foster parents report that PRIDE training — particularly hearing from experienced foster parents who describe what the first placement breakdown felt like, or what it's like to hand a child back to a birth family you have concerns about — is more formative than any checklist or handbook.

If you're in a region where in-person attendance is feasible, even if it requires a day of travel, the case for making that trip is strong.

Practical Steps for Rural and Northern Applicants

1. Call the SFFA (1-800-667-7002) first. They can tell you what's available in your region.
2. Contact your regional MSS office to get on the PRIDE registration list early — sessions fill up.
3. Confirm First Aid and CPR session availability through Saskatchewan Health Authority.
4. Start your background checks immediately — they're the longest lead-time item in the application and are not affected by training scheduling.

For a complete breakdown of how PRIDE training fits into the overall foster care application timeline in Saskatchewan — and what the home study process looks like after training is complete — see the Saskatchewan Foster Care Guide.

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