PERMANENCY CONSULTANTS

Lauren L. Frey
Lauren L. Frey, MSW, LICSW, has twenty-five years of professional experience in the fields of permanency planning, child welfare system reform, and adoption for older children, teenagers and children with special needs. A local and national trainer, consultant, and speaker, she is currently Project Manager at the Casey Center for Effective Child Welfare Practice at Casey Family Services in New Haven, CT. Prior to joining the staff of Casey, she was Director of Massachusetts Families for Kids, a collaborative system reform initiative dedicated to timely and stable permanent families for children and adolescents in state foster care. Ms. Frey previously held positions as an adoption worker, supervisor, and program manager, including developing and managing an innovative, intensive post-adoption services program providing home-based stabilization services for adoptive families. She also facilitated support groups for adoptive and pre-adoptive parents for more than twenty years. Ms. Frey is the parent of four young adults: one foster son and three daughters adopted as older adolescents "aging out" of the foster care system.

Email: lfrey@caseyfamilyservices.org

Maureen Heffernan
Maureen Heffernan, LISW, is a consultant and trainer who focuses much of her work on permanency planning services particularly as related to family support networks, foster care, kinship care and adoption from the public system. She has worked extensively in public and private child welfare settings, holding direct service, supervisory and management positions. She is also an instructor for social work graduate students. Her expertise includes program development, staff coaching, and production of written materials. With Robert G. Lewis, she is the co-author of Adolescents and Families for Life: A Toolkit for Supervisors and Families for Teens: A Toolkit for Focusing, Motivating and Educating Staff.

E-Mail: msheffernan@earthlink.net

Darla L. Henry
Dr. Henry is co-founder of Family Design Resources, Inc., and is a Best Practice and Policy Specialist for the Pennsylvania Statewide Adoption Network. She received her PhD in social work from the University of Maryland at Baltimore. Her research has been on resilience in abused children. She received her Masters of Social Work from the University of Michigan, and her Bachelor of Arts, in sociology, from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Ms. Henry is a 30 year plus social work professional, having provided both public and private social services in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. Much of her work experience has been in the child welfare field, encompassing protective services, group care, community awareness, and more specifically, in recent years, issues of permanency for children in out-of-home care, related to foster care and adoption. She has also been a clinical social worker in private practice, working with individuals, couples, families, and groups. In addition, she has been a trainer and workshop presenter for a variety of topics, such as resilience in children, group counseling with resistive clients, foster to adoptive parenting, parenting skills, attachment and loss issues for children waiting for permanency, and preparing parents for adoption. Dr. Henry has been a keynote speaker for state conferences, and has presented papers in Australia and Washington, D.C.

Email: dhenry@familydesign.org

Bob Lewis
Robert G. Lewis , MEd, MSW, LICSW, is a consultant, author, and a strategic thinker providing training and technical assistance to child welfare organizations. He focuses on the development of social work practices in permanency planning as well as policy and organizational development in support of permanency. Mr. Lewis is also an explorer and a story teller in the world of permanence. In his work he tells stories and shares examples that educate, inform and inspire. Mr. Lewis has published several permanency resources, including Adolescents and Families for Life: a Toolkit for Supervisors, written with Maureen S. Heffernan; Families For Teens: A Toolkit for Focusing, Educating and Motivating Staff, also written with Hefferman; and Family Bound Program: A Toolkit for Preparing Teens for Permanent Family Connections, developed with Communities For People. Mr. Lewis has worked with child welfare agencies in several states, including New York, Ohio, Florida, and California. For more information, please visit his website, www.highpopples.com.

Email: Bob@RGLewis.com

Pat O'Brien
Pat O'Brien, MSW, is the Founder & Executive Director of You Gotta Believe! (YGB). This organization is one of the few placement agencies in the country that limits its practice to finding permanent homes for teen and pre-teen children in foster care without regard to whether the child is freed for adoption or not. Mr. O'Brien is a nationally sought-after speaker and trainer who offers keynotes, trainings, workshops, and consulting across the country on three major topics: 1) the connection between foster care and homelessness, and how to prevent homelessness by recruiting permanent homes for teens and pre-teens in foster care; 2) how unconditional commitment to all children who come into our care is the essential ingredient in preventing placement disruption and foster care drift; and 3) how to utilize laughter and humor to reduce the stress, tension and pain of everyday life. Mr. O'Brien also produces and often hosts YGB's weekly cable access television show and radio forum, "The Adopting Teens & 'Tweens Show," a show about all facets of adopting teens and pre-teens.

Email: ygbpat@msn.com

Mary Stone-Smith
Mary is Vice-President and Family Preservation System Director with Catholic Community Services of Western Washington (CCS). She has worked in mental health and child welfare for over twenty years, creating innovative and non-traditional service approaches resulting in meaningful lifelong connections to family, for children who are in need of permanency. Family searches employed in CCS's "FAST" approach have led to lifelong family connections for children formerly struggling in the foster and/or group care system. All services provided are based on Wraparound philosophies and have resulted in children and adolescents with complex needs and histories of frequent crises and inpatient admissions remaining safely in the community with their families.

Email: MarySS@ccsww.org

Virginia Sturgeon
Virginia Sturgeon is an adoptive family support specialist, a private adoption consultant, and a nationally recognized trainer. After nearly 30 years of working in the adoption field—21 in special needs adoption—Ms. Sturgeon retired from Kentucky's Special Needs Adoption Program. She and her husband are the parents of a son adopted transracially at age 16.

Email: vsturgeon@iglou.com