coming soon!


coming soon!

 

CFFC offers a variety of trainings to parents, agencies, schools, and professionals, including mental health workers, social workers, judges, and attorneys. CFFC also designs specific training programs at the request of agencies, schools, or any group or collaboration of professionals and/or parents. Our training programs allow us to share knowledge about best practice among our colleagues, so that we can better understand and apply what will be most successful for adopted children and their families.

FaCT (Family Connections Training) Institute Series
Post-graduate Certificate Program in Adoption Therapy

Adoption Connections Training Institute: OneWorld Network (ACTION)

Annual ARC Summer Intensives


The FaCT (Family Connections Training) Institute Series

A monthly half-day training for parents and professionals with a variety of different topics.

Please note that ALL trainings are for parents (birth, foster, and adoptive), adopted adults, professionals, and any other interested adults.

Wednesday September 26, 2007
9:00am-12:00pm

School Issues: Developmental issues for children in foster care and adoption with a special segment on bullying.
The return to school in September and the many changes it entails can make for a difficult adjustment for any child. In addition, teachers, counselors, classmates and parents often have stereotypical, false and sometime NO idea about what adoption is, and what it is not. In this training, we will discuss the specific effects that new school year changes can have on adopted people and what parents can do to foster sensitivity in their children's schools. We will also spend some time talking about the increasing issue of bullying and how to help children cope. Training is for par
ents and professionals.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007
9:00am - 12:00pm
What's So Radical About Attachment Issues?

Presenters: Dr Joyce Maguire Pavao
This training will focus on the normalizing of ambient trauma and the various attachment problems with which children in adoption and foster care--both domestic and international--are faced. We will discuss how to take away the labels and make the issues understandable and normal under the circumstances, in order to heal the children and the families affected by them.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007
9:00am - 12:00pm
Family Dynamics and the Impact on Holidays and Anniversaries

Presenters: Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao
In this training, we will discuss family systems theory as it applies to adoption, foster care, kinship and guardianship. Holidays bring up feelings of the past, of past families, awareness of difference and can be times of anxiety for all family members. We will talk about these issues and the tools to reduce anxiety. It is a primer for parents and professionals that work with this population and live in the world of adoption and foster care. Training is for parents and professionals.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008
9:00am - 12:00pm

Post Adoption Issues and Concerns
Presenters: Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao
What are Post Adoption issues? Why do we need to know about them? How do we respond to them? This training will focus on the issues and concerns that arise in families created by adoption and foster care. In it, we will discuss ways to approach these issues and the best techniques with which to respond to them for the well-being of the child and his/her family.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008
9:00am - 12:00pm

Culture, Ethnicity, Race, Class and Religion
Presenters: Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao and guests to be announced
There is never enough awareness and discussion about how "isms" play themselves out in adoption. It is always important to increase our awareness and get out of our comfort zone in order to understand the experience of children and families in transracial and international adoptions. It is also important to remember that many same-race, same-nationality families have similar experiences when their families have been created across religious or economic lines. All of these perspectives will be discussed. Training is for parents and professionals.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008
9:00am - 12:00pm
Contact: Opening Closed Adoptions and Making Open Adoption Agreements
Presenter: Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao
How do you prepare to open a closed adoption? How are open adoption agreements made? This training will help answer these questions and many more around open adoptions. We will cover preparing to open a closed adoption, how to maintain good healthy contact, and what is in the best interest of children.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
9:00am - 12:00pm
CFFC Model Programs: Sibling Kinnections and Project Inclusion

Presenters: Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao and CFFC Staff

The sibling bond is often severed with adoption and foster care. The Sibling Kinnections program has worked to change the possibilities for real relationships for those children and their families who have siblings growing up in households other than their own. We will discuss the challenges and benefits of maintaining sibling connections between children being raised apart, and talk about what we have learned through the Sibling Kinnections program.

The discussion of Project Inclusion will give a view into the Zine Project and Play With Reality, CFFC programs where children and teens living in adoption and other complex families express themselves through the making of a personal magazine (Zine) or the writing and performance of a play. We will look at the products of some of these groups in order to hear from kids about themselves and how they see their lives in adoption. It is important to understand their reality in order to help them with healing and growth.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008
9:00am - 12:00pm
Parenting Styles
Presenters: Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao and guest to be announced
This training will focus on how to acknowledge your style as a parent, and how to learn what you need to supplement it. It is designed both for parents raising children in adoption and foster care, and for professionals who place children with parents.

 

Please note:
  • Pre-registration and pre-payment are required.
  • Each training costs $55/person.
  • SW, LMFT, and possibly LMHC CEUs are available for an additional $35.
  • Scholarships are available, but do not apply to CEUs.
  • Presenters are subject to change.
  • Trainings are directed and often facilitated by Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao.
  • Trainings are held in Cambridge, MA. All registrants will be informed of location or any venue changes.
 
 
 

Post-Graduate Certificate Program in Adoption Therapy 
at the Hunter College School of Social Work
City University of New York

Working to promote adoption from public foster care?
Working to increase your competency in the area of adoption practice?
If so, this course may be for you...

Applications for 2007-2008 program are being accepted now!

Click here for a flyer. Or, for further information and application, please visit www.nrcfcppp.org/adoptiontherapy or contact Yvette Heyward at (212) 452-7053 or YHeyward@HunterCuny.edu

 
 


Adoption Connections Training Institute: OneWorld Neighborhood

4th International Conference on Post Adoption Services
February, 2009 (Dates To Be Determined) At the Hotel Marlowe 
Cambridge, Massachusetts

The 2009 Brochure will be available shortly! Contact us to be added to the mailing list.

ACTION proposes an international collaboration among many grass roots organizations, individuals, and agencies. The purpose of ACTION is not to debate what is right and wrong with the adoption process, but to work together to provide the best possible training, treatment, services, and psycho-educational tools for families and children, and for the professionals who work with them worldwide. ACTION has begun to establish a network that will exchange ideas, knowledge, models, and resources to provide the best possible services for all members of the extended "Family of Adoption."

Past ACTION info:
ACTION started in 2003 and was held in Dublin, Ireland in February of 2003 and 2005. It was then brought home to Cambridge in 2007.

The goal of 2007 ACTION conference was to have a conversation about what we are doing well, what we can share, what we can do better for the families, and most of all, the children in adoption. Through this conference, CFFC is creating a distance-learning institute for dissemination and best practices worldwide.

The conference went extremely well! Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao, founder and CEO of CFFC, said, "Of the three conferences we have run to celebrate and expand the international Community of Adoption and the Post Adoption Services it provides, this February's ACTION conference ranks highest in evaluation and exitement!" The conference overall was rated very highly by the attendees, with 92% of those who filled out the Future Particpation Evaluation saying they would be interested in attending the next OneWorld Neighborhood Conference in 2009. "Lots of great info, well-researched, great variety of topics," said one particpant. Attendees were particularly moved by Ann Fessler's Presentation on her book The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade. One attendee said, "Ann's presentation was very powerful...[It] gave you such a sense of how people experience adoption." Denise Pappas, a long time friend, supporter, and advisory board member of CFFC summed it up best saying, "Concerning this conference I can only paraphrase literature's most famous orphan, Oliver Twist. 'More, please. I would like more.'"

 

Presented By: Center For Family Connections
In Collaboration With: The National Resource Center For Family-Centered Practice and Permanency Planning;
and Massachusetts Department of Social Services

Click here for the 2007 brochure.

Click here for the full schedule.

ACTION isn't just a conference; it's an international network. Join us to build a worldwide conversation about the extended Family of Adoption and to create understanding and change through dialogue. For more information or to join this network, email us at cffc@kinnect.org.


 
 

Adoption Resource Center (ARC) Summer Intensives: General Information & History

July 6th- 9th, 2008
Provincetown Theater -- Provincetown, MA


The Narrative Essence of Adoption & Complex Blended Families


Every myth, bible story and fairy tale has a bit of an adoption theme; many books and movies do as well! This year's ARC Summer Intensives will look at the aspects of adoption that build a story and will use narrative therapy, digital stories, and movies to discuss the many emotional and psychological elements that can make adoption a challenge and a joy for all involved.

Click Here for the ARC 2008 Brochure

General Information and History

Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao is the Founder and CEO of both Adoption Resource Center (ARC) and Center For Family Connections (CFFC).

ARC was founded in 1973. The ARC Summer Intensives, which began in 1985 (23rd Anniversary), are based on Dr. Pavao's Normative Crises in the Development of the Adoptive Family framework, her years of clinical experience, and her consulting and training expertise. The Intensives utilize family systems theory, which is the basis of Dr. Pavao's work. Systemic thinking is woven throughout the design of the Intensives.

Professionals, and other people who live in the world of adoption, have come to the ARC Summer Intensives from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, France, Italy, Korea, Spain, Denmark, Poland, and approximately 40 of the United States. A rich exchange of best practice ideas and theories happens each year at the Intensives.


 

Center For Family Connections - 350 Cambridge Street - Cambridge, MA 02141 - Tel: 617-547-0909 / (800) KINNECT - Fax: 617-497-5952 - E-mail: cffc@kinnect.org