Disorders that Impact School Performance for Children who are Adopted (or Adopted Emotionally)
Joyce Maguire Pavao, EdD, LCSW, LMFT
Steve Willis, PhD

March 29, 2010, 9:00 am–2:00 pm
1 Cranberry Hill
Lexington, MA
Free for members; $50 for non-members
CEUs for this series have been applied for

How to be adoption sensitive, in the school setting is the topic of this workshop. There are many articles that talk about attachment disorder, reactive attachment disorder, bipolar disorder and ADD and ADHD in adopted children. This can pathologize and target children and youth who are adopted, in ways that add to their problems and not supply solutions. This will provide a brief framework for thinking differently about children who come from adoption or emotional adoption backgrounds (foster care, guardianship, kinship care, alternative reproductive technologies). An afternoon segment will focus on adoption and foster care from an agency’s persepctive. An afternoon segment by Steve Willis, PhD, will focus on children in foster care. Dr. Willis will articulate how attachment issues affect children in homes and communities. An expert in abuse and neglect, Dr. Willis brings a wealth of knowledge and experience about the dynamics of both raising and educating children in foster care.

Joyce Maguire Pavao is Founder and CEO of Center For Family Connections (CFFC) in Cambridge, MA. She is an adjunct faculty member at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Pavao has developed models for treatment and training using her systemic, intergenerational, developmental framework and her “brief-long-term therapy” model. She has done extensive training and consultation, both nationally and internationally, on issues in adoption and complex families and child welfare. Dr. Pavao is an adopted person and author of The Family of Adoption, Beacon Press 1998 and 2005.

Steve Willis is the Clinical Director of DARE Family Services which is a leading non-profit social services agency that specializes in providing therapeuticfoster care to children and teens that have been abused or neglected Dr. Willis, a clinical psychologist, has been the Clinical Director of DARE for more than 14 years. DARE is one of the most successful child placement agencies in New England.