Lifting Youth Voices: Engaging Children and Youth in Achieving Permanency

Brought to you by the Virginia Department of Social Services

Join us November 20-21, 2019 for a two-day conference that will cover a variety of foster care and adoption topics—to meet the diverse needs and levels of experience of adoptive and foster parents, child welfare professionals, and people who were adopted or in foster care. The conference will kick off with an evening reception on November 20, 2019 and continue on November 21, 2019 with a full day of informative, engaging workshops.

We will offer workshops from expert speakers covering a range of topics, including:

• Supporting and preserving adoptive families
• Core issues in adoption
• Understanding Special Education
• Empowering Families raising children and youth with special needs
• Post adoption resources
• Search and Reunion 
• Race, culture, and diversity in adoption and foster care
• Supporting children and families in adoption and foster care
• Recruiting  and matching families for teens and children with special needs