Adoption and Attachment with Innovations in Intervention,
Adoption offers children the most radical form of intervention that exists, arising from the promise of permanence in a new family. Adoptive families often face unique challenges as children’s prior experiences often include physical, emotional, and social deprivation.
On Wednesday, April 6, from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m., in Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, 5th floor, presentations and discussions sponsored by The New School for Social Research’s Psychology department, will bring together leading authorities in the fields of adoption, attachment, and clinical intervention, and will focus on the unique needs of adopted children, with special emphasis on the nature of attachment relationships, and new ways of supporting adoptive families.
Speakers include:
- Dr. Jane Aronson, founder of the Worldwide Orphans Foundation, is devoted to transforming the lives of orphaned children by taking them out of anonymity and helping them to become healthy, independent, productive members of their communities and the world. Aronson, known all over the world simply as the orphan doctor,, will discuss her thoughts about the challenges and needs that adoptive families face. Based on over 20 years experience working as the leading pediatric specialist in the field of adoption and institutional care, she will offer her unique perspectives on understanding and supporting adoptive families.
- Dr. Miriam Steele, professor and director of the clinical training program in psychology at The New School for Social Research. Her work over 20 years has used an attachment framework to bridge theory, research, and applications in the field of adoption and foster care. Steele will address the implications of trauma, loss, and separation for the individual adopted child (and adoptive parent). She will also discuss family processes that contribute to the resolution of trauma and loss and permit new adoptive families to realize for all its members the promise of permanence, safety, and health.
- Dr. George Downing will draw on his 30 years of work developing Video Intervention Therapy (VIT), a method that facilitates rapid change in human relationships. Dr. Downing, based in Paris, consults widely on clinical work that relies on VIT. VIT is appropriate for all ranges of relationship-focused work, including parent-infant, parent-child, child-child, and adult couple relationships and families. Dr. Downing describes how VIT can provide essential and effective support for adopted children and their adoptive parents.
Admission to this event is $20. Please make checks payable to: The New School CMHSAC Workshops, and mail them to: Department of Psychology; The New School for Social Research, Attn: Nichelle Horlacher, 80 5th Ave., 7th Fl. New York, NY 10011