Call for Proposals

The Coalition’s 29th Annual New York State Foster Care and Adoption Conference will be held on Thursday, May 10 – Saturday, May 12, 2018 at the Hilton Albany in Albany, New York

2018 Workshop RFPs have been received. Thank you to all who sent in submissions. Thank you for your patience. Potential presenters can expect to be notified the week of January 8th, 2018

CALL FOR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS

The Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York is seeking presenters for the organization’s annual conference. The conference is targeted to foster, adoptive and kinship parents and the professionals who work with them. We encourage foster, kinship and adoptive parents, child welfare professionals, adoptees, birth parents, youth formerly in foster care, therapists, child advocates and researchers to submit workshop proposals for one or more of our thirty workshops. Workshops, which will be offered on Friday, May 11^th and Saturday, May 12^th, are 75 to 80 minutes in length.

We welcome all proposals and have particular interest in the following topics:

Self-care as adoptive parents and foster parents, but also self-care for agency workers.
Dealing with triggers and issues as they emerge during the lifelong journey; teen years,“anniversary” dates, holidays, birthdays, rites of passage and subsequent losses.
Topics that are more than personal perspective “stories” but also give information what helped resolve the issues; what worked, what helped, what didn’t and why.
Trauma informed approaches to classroom and strategies for advocating trauma-sensitive schools.
Adult adoptees and foster alumni who could talk about the skills they used to overcome issues such as therapies, journaling, reclaiming their narrative, conversations had with their adoptive parents.
Use of social media for connecting with birth families and support.

Innovative therapies for Trauma; Neurofeedback Therapy, EMDR, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Congnitive Behavioral Thearpy (CBT), Animal Therapies, Comprenhensive Resource Model (CRM): It would be particularly helpful to have demonstrations by practitioners which would allow parents to see how it works through experience.
Topics that are new in the field; new research, books, thearpies, local and community resources.
Understanding how a parent’s own past traumas can affect parenting.
Workshop content for older children and teens is also under consideration, for a “youth track.”

Guidelines

Presentations should be interactive, engaging and incorporate audience participation and/or questions. Proposals should ideally address one of the topics listed above, through the Coalition is open to other ideas. Submissions are due by Friday December 15th and are reviewed by Coalition staff. Prospective presenters will be notified by December 31st.

Selected presenters receive free conference registration for up to two presenters per workshop, but are expected to donate their time and expenses. Presenter registration includes conference program meals, reception, special events, free duplication of workshop handouts and discounted fees for conference program ads.

Proposal Format

WORKSHOP OVERVIEW: Using online form, provide a brief outline for each workshop proposed. Include: workshop title, description, intended audience(s) and which areas of interest (listed above) your proposed workshop will address.

PRESENTER INFORMATION: Include short bio, affiliation(s) and contact info (mail, email and phone number) for each presenter. If there are online videos of other presentations, include links.

Questions? Contact Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy at (646) 688-4321 or email at claudia@affcny.org.

Please share with any other groups, pages, or interested parties: AFFCNY Workshop RFP