The 2009 Webinar series will include the following sessions:

Unless otherwise noted, the webinars run from 7pm - 8pm, Eastern Time.

July 2, 2009:  FAS Inside Eastern European Orphanages, presented by Dr. Todd J. Ochs
During this webinar, Dr. Ochs will focus on the needs of children adopted from Eastern Europe.

Meet the Presenter
Dr. Ochs has been a general pediatrician in Chicago since 1984.  He lives in the Ravenswood neighborhood, with his wife, five daughters, and dog.  He began working with adoptive families in 1997, during the adoption of his first (of four) Chinese daughters.  Since then, he has seen over a thousand of internationally adopted children in his practice and adoption clinic, has done thousands more referral reviews, has spoken to thousands of adoptive parents, and has adopted three more special needs Chinese daughters. 

His office also is recognized as a “Center of Excellence” by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, to see foster children for their comprehensive examinations after placement, and he is the pediatrician for an adolescent group home, as well.  He has written adoption medicine articles for several adoption publications, for the AAP Illinois Chapter Newsletter, and for the Child’s Doctor of Children’s Memorial Hospital.  He has spoken on international adoption at the International Pediatric Association in Beijing, in 2001, since, at the CAFFA and Midwest Adoption conferences, and to hundreds of adoptive parents, each year, at agency educational sessions. 

He is a founding member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Section on Adoption and Foster Care, and served on its executive committee for six years.  He has advocated for adopted and fostered children with public and private schools, around adoption health and mental health issues, Including FASD.  He is an advisory board member of Illinois NOFAS.  He can be reached at his office, at 773-769-4600, via fax, at 773-769-6242, via email, at t-ochs@northwestern.edu, or home office, at 773-907-8864.

July 7, 2009:  Developing Cultural Competence in Adopted Children, presented by Patricia Irwin Johnston
In this webinar, Pat will be talking about interracial/intercultural adoption, especially with international adoptive families.  The presentation will be on the concept of adoption and how it affects families.  She will touch on racism, prejudice, and discrimination and talk about how families should prepare themselves, as well as their children for these things.  Pat will also explain ‘colorblindness’ and why it is dangerous to exercise this.  She will discuss the importance of ethnicity and how it and cultural identity affect the adopted child.

Meet the Presenter
Patricia Irwin Johnston is an infertility and adoption educator who has provided trainings for consumers of infertility and adoption services and related medical, adoption, and counseling professionals throughout the United States and Canada for over 25 years.  From 1978 through 1992 Ms. Johnston was an active volunteer with RESOLVE, Inc., the U.S. network of 50+ chapters and over 15,000 members serving the fertility-impaired, serving for three years as chair of RESOLVE's national board of directors. RESOLVE's annual award for outstanding chapter service by a volunteer was named the Patricia Irwin Johnston Volunteer of the Year Award in her honor. 

Pat is the author of numerous articles and several books, including the newest (January, 2008) Adopting: Sound Choices, Strong Families, and Adoption Is a Family Affair!: What Relatives and Friends Must Know, along with many other award-winning works.  But infertility and adoption are more than Pat Johnston's profession. She is a member of a family which has experienced two generations of infertility and expanded itself through three generations by adoption. Pat's husband and sister-in-law were adopted as babies, and her three children, now adults, joined Pat and her husband Dave's adoption-expanded family as infants. Pat is LIVING what she talks about.

August 4, 2009: Finally Finding My Birth Family with the Help of My Adoptive Family, presented by Maureen & Aselefech Evans
In this webinar, adoptive mom Maureen Evans and her daughter Aselefech Evans will share the story of their family's decision to search for Aselefech's biological family.

Meet the Presenters:
Maureen Evans has been involved in adoption personally and professionally for over 20 years.  She was the first executive director of the Joint Council on International Children's Services (when it was an affiliation of international adoption agencies), as well as interim executive director of the Barker Foundation (a full service adoption agency licensed in Maryland, D.C., and Virginia), and executive director of Children's Home Society and Family Services - East, located in Silver Spring, Maryland.  Her undergraduate degree is from Georgetown University, and she holds a master's degree from the University of Maryland, College Park.  She and her husband are the proud parents through adoption of four children, now all young adults.

Aselefech Evans was 6 years old when she and her twin sister Adanech arrived from Ethiopia to join their U.S. family.  Aselefech graduated from Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland in 2007.  She is now an honor roll student at Prince George's Community College, where she is majoring in social work.

August. 6, 2009:  I'm The One That Needed A Time Out, presented by Heather Forbes
Do you ever find yourself overreacting to your child's behavior?  Do you sometimes find yourself at your brink, not understanding how you could have moved from a place of pure love and joy to absolute frustration and intolerance?  Parenting is the hardest job--ever!  Our children can move us to a whole new level within ourselves, especially children with traumatic histories.  They have a way of challenging us like no one else on this planet could ever do.  Listen in on this webinar with Heather T. Forbes, LCSW to discover why these dynamics are happening within you.  You aren't going crazy!  There is a reason for these intense feelings and she will bring to you a new understanding to settle your heart and mind.  As an adoptive mother herself, she knows first hand how it feels to be the one who needs a time-out more than your child! Heather will also share some of her own personal story of healing that will inspire you and help you embrace each moment with your child.

Meet the Presenter
Heather T. Forbes, LCSW, is the co-founder and owner of the Beyond Consequences Institute. She is an internationally published author on the topics of adoptive motherhood, raising children with difficult and severe behaviors, and self-development. Forbes lectures, consults, and coaches parents throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, with families in crisis working to create peaceful, loving families. She is passionate about supporting families by bridging the gap between academic research and "when the rubber hits the road" parenting. Much of her experience and insight on understanding trauma, disruptive behaviors, developmental delays, and adoption-related issues comes from her direct mothering experience of her two internationally adopted children.

September 1, 2009:  Medical Special Needs in Orphans, presented by Dr. Todd J. Ochs
Dr. Ochs will cover medical issues including Fetal Alcohol Spectrum and exposure to alcohol, in utero.  These two conditions will be compared and contrasted.

Meet the Presenter
Dr. Ochs has been a general pediatrician in Chicago since 1984.  He lives in the Ravenswood neighborhood, with his wife, five daughters, and dog.  He began working with adoptive families in 1997, during the adoption of his first (of four) Chinese daughters.  Since then, he has seen over a thousand of internationally adopted children in his practice and adoption clinic, has done thousands more referral reviews, has spoken to thousands of adoptive parents, and has adopted three more special needs Chinese daughters. 

His office also is recognized as a “Center of Excellence” by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, to see foster children for their comprehensive examinations after placement, and he is the pediatrician for an adolescent group home, as well.  He has written adoption medicine articles for several adoption publications, for the AAP Illinois Chapter Newsletter, and for the Child’s Doctor of Children’s Memorial Hospital.  He has spoken on international adoption at the International Pediatric Association in Beijing, in 2001, since, at the CAFFA and Midwest Adoption conferences, and to hundreds of adoptive parents, each year, at agency educational sessions. 

He is a founding member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Section on Adoption and Foster Care, and served on its executive committee for six years.  He has advocated for adopted and fostered children with public and private schools, around adoption health and mental health issues, Including FASD.  He is an advisory board member of Illinois NOFAS.  He can be reached at his office, at 773-769-4600, via fax, at 773-769-6242, via email, at t-ochs@northwestern.edu, or home office, at 773-907-8864.

September 3, 2009:  Understanding and Managing Loss in Adoption, presented by Dr. David Brodzinsky
Relying on years of experience as a researcher and counselor in the field of adoption, Dr. Brodzinsky will present information aimed at helping adoptive parents as they in turn seek to assist their adopted children in identifying, understanding and managing loss inherent in adoption.  This webinar will touch upon the various losses unique to an adoptee's life circumstance and will provide suggestions for effectively managing these various challenges.

Meet the Presenter
David Brodzinsky, Ph.D. is one of the most highly regarded researchers, educators and authors in the field of adoption and foster care. He is the Research and Project Director for the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, www.adoptioninstitute.org.  He is Professor Emeritus of Developmental and Clinical Psychology and immediate past Director of the Foster Care Counseling Project at Rutgers University.  He also maintains an active private practice in psychology, much of which focuses on the clinical needs of adoption triad members.  Dr. Brodzinsky has published widely on the psychology of adoption in professional journals and is the co-author or co-editor of five books on adoption, including The Psychology of Adoption (1990); Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self (1992); Children's Adjustment to Adoption: Developmental and Clinical Issues (1998); Adoption and Prenatal Drug Exposure: Research, Policy, and Practice (2000), and Psychological Issues in Adoption: Research and Practice (2005)."

(October 1, 2009):  Fostering Attachment, presented by Lynn Wetterberg
Although many families receive education prior to adoption, they may not have a thorough understanding of attachment and its importance.  Parenting a child with a disturbance of attachment is the toughest job any parent could have.  There are many things parents can do, however, to help their child bond.  This seminar will discuss the basic theory behind attachment and what parents can do to foster their child’s attachment to them.

Meet the Presenter
Lynn Wetterberg, is the Executive Director of ATTACh (www.ATTACh.org),  an international non-profit coalition of professionals and families dedicated to helping those with attachment difficulties by sharing knowledge, talents and resources. Lynn has previously served as  Co-Director and Executive Director of Uniting Families Foundation, a position from which she retired in January 2007.  Lynn not only has personal  experience with adopting older children, but considerable professional experience.  She has degrees in Elementary Education and Accounting, as well as a Masters in Human Services Administration. Lynn has been instrumental in organizing  educational conferences throughout the world to train and educate both professionals and families.  Additionally she has been invited to testify before the Congressional Coalition on Adoption and has served as both Treasurer and vice-President for Joint Council on International Children's Services.

Lynn is the proud mother of four children originally born in Eastern Europe.  Through her personal experiences Lynn became actively involved in issues of attachment concerning adopted children and has been a sought after speaker and presenter for international and regional conferences.

October 6, 2009:  Inside Transracial Adoption:  When International Adoptions Mean Parenting Across Racial Lines, presented by Beth Hall
Move beyond the debate to discuss real solutions to real challenges.  As the parent of two grown adoptees who are different races from one another (Guatemalan and African American/Jamaican), as well as she and her husband, who are both white, Beth is able to offer personal stories that are both encouraging and supportive and also reinforce the message that race matters, racism is alive, and families built transracially can develop strong and binding ties by embracing rather then fearing their differences.

Meet the Presenter
Beth Hall is the Founder and Director of Pact (www.pactadopt.org), a multicultural adoption organization dedicated to addressing essential issues affecting adopted children of color. She is also the author of numerous articles and lectures across the country. Her book (co-authored with Gail Steinberg), Inside Transracial Adoption, is filled with personal stories, practical suggestions and theory combined in an encouraging and supportive style that has been hailed as a classic within the adoption community.  Beth is the white adoptive mom of two teenage children: Sofia, Latina, and James, African American. Beth grew up a member of an adoptive family; her sister, Barbara, adopted by (and Beth having been born to) their parents. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and children (when they aren't away in college).

November 5, 2009: Brothers and Sisters in Adoption, presented by Ms. Arleta James
It is often a struggle to manage an adopted child suffering from post-institutional trauma AND meet the needs of the family’s typically-developing children (i.e., these “normal” children may be birth, foster or adopted.) If you are a parent concerned as to the impact of adopting on your developmentally healthy children, this webinar will be of help to you. Discussion includes the expectations of the children already present in the family prior to the family accepting the placement of a new child. The post-placement impact of bringing a child with a history of trauma into the family is then examined. The workshop concludes with strategies to help each family member forge strong relationships.

Meet the Presenter
Arleta James, M.S., P.C.C, has been an adoption professional for a dozen years. She spent several years as a caseworker for the Pennsylvania Statewide Adoption Network placing foster children with adoptive families and the now works as a therapist providing services for attachment difficulties, childhood trauma and issues related to adoption. She was the 1999 Pennsylvania Adoption Professional of the Year. She is currently on staff at the Attachment and Bonding Center of Ohio. She is the author of the 2009 Perspectives Press release Brothers and Sisters in Adoption: Helping Children Navigate Relationships When New Kids Join the Family. Read her blogs at Challenged Family Building - www.perspectivespress.com/blog.

December 3, 2009, 7-8:30 pm: Developing Cultural Competence in Adopted Children, presented by Patricia Irwin Johnston
In this webinar, Pat will be talking about interracial/intercultural adoption, especially with international adoptive families.  The presentation will be on the concept of adoption and how it affects families.  She will touch on racism, prejudice, and discrimination and talk about how families should prepare themselves, as well as their children for these things.  Pat will also explain ‘colorblindness’ and why it is dangerous to exercise this.  She will discuss the importance of ethnicity and how it and cultural identity affect the adopted child.

Meet the Presenter
Patricia Irwin Johnston is an infertility and adoption educator who has provided trainings for consumers of infertility and adoption services and related medical, adoption, and counseling professionals throughout the United States and Canada for over 25 years.  From 1978 through 1992 Ms. Johnston was an active volunteer with RESOLVE, Inc., the U.S. network of 50+ chapters and over 15,000 members serving the fertility-impaired, serving for three years as chair of RESOLVE's national board of directors. RESOLVE's annual award for outstanding chapter service by a volunteer was named the Patricia Irwin Johnston Volunteer of the Year Award in her honor. 

Pat is the author of numerous articles and several books, including the newest (January, 2008) Adopting: Sound Choices, Strong Families, and Adoption Is a Family Affair!: What Relatives and Friends Must Know, along with many other award-winning works.  But infertility and adoption are more than Pat Johnston's profession. She is a member of a family which has experienced two generations of infertility and expanded itself through three generations by adoption. Pat's husband and sister-in-law were adopted as babies, and her three children, now adults, joined Pat and her husband Dave's adoption-expanded family as infants. Pat is LIVING what she talks about.