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Breakout Sessions

Breakout sessions are subject to change. A full program will be published on the Rudd-REFCA website in March.

The Secure Base model:  A framework for therapeutic caregiving in foster care and adoption
Mary Beek
This session introduces and explains a framework for providing focused, therapeutic caregiving to children in foster care and adoption: The Secure Base model, developed by Professor Gillian Schofield and Dr Mary Beek at the University of East Anglia, UK. The Secure Base model is based in theories of attachment and resilience and drawn from research and practice in foster care and adoption. The presenter will briefly describe the model and its applications and give examples of the ways that foster carers and adopters have successfully used it as a tool to shape their caregiving and support their children’s progress and development.  Associated publications and resources will be signposted.

Finding Adoptive Families for Children in Care: Perspectives from the US and England
Cherilyn Dance, Kathy Ledesma 
In this session, which is intended as an opportunity to reflect on adoption policy and practice, Kathy and Cherilyn will consider the way in which adoption has become a permanence option for some groups of children in care in the US and in England. They will explore briefly the profiles of children adopted from care and touch on similarities and differences in legislation, policy, process and practice in the two countries. The main focus of the session will be on current issues and tensions associated with finding families for children in a timely way. Topics to be discussed will include assessment of parental capacity and care planning for children within the Human Rights framework, practitioner values and beliefs, delays for children and the impact of new technology and adopter initiated matching.

Transaction to Transformation: A Modern Understanding of Adoption to Strengthen All Families
April Dinwoodie
After decades of research, passionate advocacy and practical experiences - why haven’t policies and practices on behalf of children and families moved far enough and fast enough? The Donaldson Adoption Institute will share results of new public opinion research that gauges how much Americans really know about adoption and where they stand on issues impacting adoption and modern family structures and explore key actions that are needed in order to truly bring a new world of adoption to life.

Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools
Anne Eisner
This presentation will share the work of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, a collaboration of Massachusetts Advocates for Children and Harvard Law School.  Based on their publications, Helping Traumatized Children Learn and Creating and Advocating for Trauma-Sensitive Schools, the workshop will summarize trauma’s impact on learning, behavior and relationships at school, and briefly describe the Attributes and Framework that can guide schools in creating the school-wide infrastructure needed to provide a safe and supportive, trauma-sensitive learning environment that is responsive, not only to the needs of students who have been exposed to adverse childhood experiences, but to the needs of all students. The highlight of the presentation will be the opportunity to hear from a team of educators who are creating a trauma-sensitive school. 

Expanding the Village: How One Simple Wish is Encouraging EVERYONE To Support Youth in Foster Care
Danielle Gletow, Founder & Executive Director of One Simple Wish
In 2006, Danielle Gletow and her husband, Joe, became foster parents in NJ with the goal of adopting. Frustrated by the stigma held by many about foster children and knowing they needed to empower more of the masses to get involved, they created One Simple Wish in 2008. One Simple Wish started in NJ serving just 12 agencies and their children. Now, 7 years later, OSW serves more than 6,000 kids a year in 49 states through over 750 Community Partnerships. By creating a culture of collaboration and inclusiveness One Simple Wish has encouraged a conversation about helping our nation’s most vulnerable youth in people and places that hadn’t considered their role before. Now One Simple Wish is embarking on yet another innovative undertaking, to bring One Simple Wish World to cities all over the country. This engaging and interactive approach to showing everyone how they fit into the solution has raised over 3 million dollars in private support and garnered the attention of CNN Heroes, NBC Nightly News, The Christian Science Monitor and scores of other national media outlets. Danielle lives in Central NJ with her husband, Joe, their two amazing daughters Mia and Lily and their beloved dogs Alice and Duncan.

Sexual Minority and Heterosexual Parents Adopting Through the Child Welfare System: Challenges and Surprises During the Transition to Parenthood and Beyond
Abbie Goldberg, April Moyer, David Brodzinsky
This session will address some of the unexpected challenges and surprises encountered by heterosexual, lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals and couples who adopt through the child welfare system. Data will be presented regarding (a) the challenges that foster-to-adopt parents encounter post-placement, including: legal insecurity in their parental role, disorganization within social service systems, inadequate support services, and complex relationships with birth parents; (b) unmet expectations that foster-to-adopt parents often encounter with regard to the types of children that are placed in their home (e.g., in terms of age, race, gender, and special needs); and (c) the experiences of parents that have adopted via child welfare in terms of contact and openness with birth family members. Engaged and informal discussion of the implications of these findings for families and clinicians, as well as Q&A, will follow these brief research presentations.

Racial Identity at the Intersection of Artist, Academic, and Advocate
Susan Harris O'Connor, Ruth McRoy, Kim Stevens
This session vividly illustrates how the intersection of three perspectives (artist, academic, and advocate) can provide a more powerful understanding of the complexity in the development of racial identities of transracially adopted children. Emphasis is placed on how professionals can assist adoptive, foster and first parents in advocating and providing the necessary supports. There will be a Q & A period for further dialogue on both the subject matter and this innovative style of teaching and collaboration.

HEROES Youth Leadership Project
Since our launch in December of 2011 HEROES has had tremendous success with engaging youth from throughout Massachusetts in the work of Re-Envisioning Foster Care in America. Our program focuses heavily on life skills development through the arts, outdoor adventure and public advocacy. Join us for an interactive workshop outlining the key components of the HEROES model and experience some of the magic through a media presentation showing behind the scenes process of our Youth Truth theater component.
 

Massachusetts Youth Legislative Shadow Day
A presentation and discussion by HEROES youth leaders about their experience with our most recent program achievement.

The English adoption journey: mapping needs, costs and outcomes
Lisa Holmes, Samantha McDermid, and John Simmonds
This presentation will outline the adoption pathways in England and will highlight how a systematic approach to analysing and costing pathways can, and has, informed strategic planning. Furthermore the presentation will highlight the importance of costing child welfare services using the child as the unit of analysis, rather than focusing purely on fiscal data. Examples will be provided of how this approach facilitates an exploration of children’s needs and circumstances, how they impact on children’s pathways through the child welfare system and the outcomes that are achieved.

Advocacy 101: Advocacy for Self (Youth-Only Workshop)
Amina Jordan-Mendez, Gabriel Peeples
In this workshop youth will have the opportunity to learn and practice self-advocacy skills. They will gain experience that will help them to better navigate the world of participatory child welfare, a shift in the system after the passage of the Strengthening Families Act. Youth need to develop the skills to participate in the process on their own behalf in a respectful and engaged way that will ensure their voices will be heard. The workshop will highlight several key pieces of policy in Massachusetts, including the Foster Child Bill of Rights and the Sibling Bill of Rights.

Improving College Graduation Outcomes for Foster Youth: The Wily Network 
Judi King & Katherine MacDonald
The vision of the Wily Network is to improve college graduations outcomes for youth with foster care experience at four-year residential colleges. Our presentation will offer a brief history of higher education support programs for college students with foster care experience.  Using examples from our work we will outline the critical need for developing robust programs to enhance each scholar’s college experience and help them to develop a life long network of peers and supports. Finally, we will highlight the importance of creating performance metrics in order to continually evaluate the networks efficacy.

The Legacy of Foster Care: An Intergenerational Panel of Foster Care Alumni
Grace Hilliard-Koshinsky, Charles Lerner
Legacy is defined as “something that comes from the past”. While the legacy of foster care may be different from person to person depending on their experiences, the impact is felt nonetheless. Alumni panelists from across generations come together at this year’s Rudd-REFCA Conference to discuss how they have integrated their experiences in foster care into their lives personally and professionally. They have come together in the hope that by sharing their stories you may become an even more effective ally to children and youth who follow in their footsteps as alumni. 

Facilitating Peer Support between Foster Carers in the UK
Samantha McDermid, Lisa Holmes, Helen Trivedi, Claire Baker, and Doug Lawson
Peer support between foster carers has been found to facilitate emotional and practical support for foster carers, information sharing and opportunities to reflect on and improve practice, along with reducing foster carers stress, reducing disruptions in placements, and improvements to the retention of foster carers. This presentation will bring together the findings of three research studies to explore three innovative approaches to facilitate peer support between foster carers and the impact that those approaches have carers and the children and young people they care for. The issues associated with implementing such models within fostering services in the UK and recommendations for policy and practice will also be examined.

Fostering Futures: A Successful Community Volunteer Team Model for Supporting Foster Families
Bill McLaughlin, Darlene Ward
Fostering Futures NY (FFNY) is an innovative program that is operating in three counties in upstate New York that is identifying previously untapped resources from within the community.  The program is essentially a foster parent support model that uses no government resources.  FFNY  builds partnerships between teams of volunteers from the community and individual foster families.  The goal of a team is simple - to provide practical help to foster parents in their task of providing a safe, stable and nurturing home for the the abused and neglected children in their care.  The early results are positive.  Foster parents are better supported and more satisfied in their roles.  Children have more interaction with adults and they are less likely to be moved.  And volunteers love the chance to make a difference in kids lives!

Getting practice right:  Using the strength and limits of research findings to “bridge the gap” between practice and research
Beth Neil, Sally Popper, Karen Zilberstein
This session explores how gaps between research and practice can be bridged. In the first part of the session, Karen Zilberstein and Sally Popper will identify areas in which research has provided useful guides for practice and areas in which research and standardized interventions do not yet completely address the experiences and needs of individual children and families. The second contribution will be from Beth Neil who will outline the “Contact after Adoption Change Project” from the UK. This project brings together an adoption researcher with experienced adoption professionals with the aim of coproducing online resources to help make research-informed, case sensitive decisions about post adoption contact for children adopted from foster care.

The Future is Now: Technology’s Role on the Frontline
Adam Pertman
The population of children and families we serve through foster care and adoption has changed radically in the 21st Century, and so the institutions themselves are evolving to meet their needs. This presentation examines the research and implications of this historic transformation, with a particular focus on the technological advances – such as the internet, social media, “data-sharing” and even IBM’s Watson computing system – that are adding complexities of our world even as they are providing unprecedented opportunities to improve outcomes.

Improving the Outcomes for Success: Building a National Adoption Competent Child Welfare and Mental Health Workforce
Debbie Riley & Anne Atkinson
This presentation will highlight the need for adoption competency training for  child welfare workers and mental health professionals, provide an overview of the development, implementation, and rigorous multi-year evaluation of the Training for Adoption Competency (TAC), now in 15 states  and the foundational constructs for a Children’s Bureau funded web-based training program, the National Adoption Competent Mental Health Training Initiative (NTI) both developed by the Center for Adoption Support and Education.

Part of the family: achieving permanence in long-term family foster care
Joyce Maguire Pavao
This presentation will explore research on long-term foster care as a permanence option. It will focus on two contentious practice issues.  First there is the extent to which long-term foster children become fully part of the family as intended in the concept of permanence. Secondly there is the question of the role that foster carers in long-term placements need to play as both skilled professionals and committed parents. This presentation will bring together key research findings with reflections on policy, practice and the support needs of long-term foster care placements. 

A Presentation from Sixto Cancel: Think of Us!
Sixto Cancel, Founder, Think of Us!
Think of Us is developing an online platform to support foster youth, foster/adoptive parents, and the state workforces. Think of Us started as a commitment of action with the Clinton Global Initiative University. The idea: To develop an online space for youth to access content to help them navigate their lives. The Think of Us Team is led by founder, Sixto Cancel and made up of fifteen young professionals/seasoned experts.

Dan Hughes' Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) for Children with Trauma and Attachment Histories -- an introduction for caretakers and therapists.
Robert Spottswood
Children who learned from early experience to not trust adults for help or care can present troubling emotional challenges to loving caretakers.  This presentation will explain the experiential logic behind that mistrust, as well as Dan Hughes' relationship-focused approach to re-engaging such children.  Attendees will hear the theory behind Hughes' model, practice an attitude of PACE (Playful, Accepting, Curious and Empathic), and view short clips of a variety of DDP therapy sessions (subtitled).