Presenter: Joyce Maguire Pavao, Ed.D, LCSW, LMFT, is an internationally noted consultant and coach on child welfare, adoption, team building, and training. She is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and has consulted for various public and private child welfare agencies, adoption agencies, schools, and community groups, as well as probate and family court judges, lawyers, and clergy.
The Children’s Behavioral Health Knowledge Center at the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health is sponsoring a FREE half-day workshop for Massachusetts behavioral health professionals on skills and strategies for working within adoption and complex families, with emphasis on communication that helps and hurts the people in adoption. Workshop participants will learn strategies for discussing adoption with youth and families and the value of gathering more information at the outset while working with a family and other professionals.
At the conclusion of this activity participants will be able to:
1. Describe the framework of adoption from a normal and developmental perspective.
2. Recognize how our language can contribute to the problems and not the solutions in normalizing adoption even in an intake process.
3. Discuss the importance of positive and boundaried discussion about children in adoption.
An application for continuing education credits for social workers and mental health counselors has been submitted.
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