Our adoption and foster care conference is back, and bigger than ever! This year, on February 1st and 2nd, 2008 in Edmonds, we'll have two days of talks for parents and professionals, from a panel of local and national experts. With the "Resilient Rascals" conferences, we and our colleagues at Nurturing Attachments and Cascadia Training try to schedule a lineup of talks that we'd be excited to attend, and give ourselves a push to do talks that go beyond "Adoption 101".

We're very excited to be able to host Dana Johnson, MD, this year. Dr. Johnson directs the University of Minnesota International Adoption Clinic, which is the country's longest-running IA clinic. He has been a passionate advocate for children, and Dr. Bledsoe and I are fortunate to count him as a mentor.

Dr. Johnson and his colleagues have been responsible for much of the seminal research on international adoption. They've just completed an truly impressive study: the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, which is the first and hopefully the last randomized controlled study of foster care versus orphanage caregiving. Results have recently been published in Science, and Dr. Johnson has a remarkable presentation prepared on what they've found. Not to be missed - Dr. Johnson is a dynamic speaker, and this is a landmark study.

But wait, there's more:

I'll be covering "The Nature and Nurture of the Brain", which will review the latest brain research, and how it can help us parent and advocate for fostered and adopted children.
Paulette Caswell, MSW, will address domestic foster care research and outcomes.
Stephen Glass, MD, will cover Sensory Processing and other facets of neurology that impact our kids.
Gwen Lewis, PhD, will answer the question "Why Does My Rascal Go Ballistic?" with a talk on the executive functions, the brain skills that help us regulate our behavior.
Julie Bledsoe, MD, will review research-based "Interventions for the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum".
Margaret Cashman, MD, a child psychiatrist and sleep specialist, will present on the use of psychiatic medications in fostered and adopted children.
We'll have a whole panel of folks addressing the ever-present problem of "Sleep and Adoption".
In "Om a Little Teapot", I'll put you to sleep (in a good way) with practical techniques for relaxation and self-regulation.
Deborah Gray, MSW, will present "Five Faves for Anxious Children", an upbeat skills-building workshop for parenting children with anxiety or traumatic stress.
Plus plenty of time for Q&A, and we'll wrap things up with a panel to discuss some challenging cases.

As ever, we'll aim to be informative and entertaining, and to filter the latest research through a practical parenting lens. Sign up now at the Cascadia Training website! We hope to see you there ...