'We can't all do everything, but we can each do something" (Jason Johnson). 

One of the greatest misconceptions of our time is that the only way to support vulnerable children is to adopt or foster. Yet there are so many other important roles that are critical to supporting foster and adoptive families to  care for children. Join us in exploring the many ways that we can effectively engage. What's your something?

No child enters the foster care system or experiences adoption without profound loss. Even for the child adopted at the moment of birth, there is a deep loss of biological family. Understanding and intentionality are key to walking children through their deep hurts to a place of healing. This workshop explores the impacts of early childhood trauma on a child's developing brain, and how these impacts affect their body, beliefs and behaviour and offers practical tools through the Trust Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) methodology from the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development.

Given the hardships experienced by children in care, many are identified as having special needs including Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), autism, vision, hearing, or speech impairment, cognitive disabilities, sensory processing disorder, delayed development or learning challenges (to name a few). However, globally there are many children awaiting adoption with disabilities such as: down syndrome, cerebral palsy, cleft pallet, limb deformities, hydrocephalus, blindness etc. This workshop explores the realities surround adoption of children with diverse or 'severe' special needs from within Canada or abroad.