Plenary Sessions & Speakers

Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Opening Lunch Plenary - Keynote Speaker
Kinship-Informed Practice: Implications for Child Welfare Services

Dr. Joseph Crumbley
Trainer, Consultant & Therapist
Jenkintown, PA

Dr. Joseph Crumbley is a private practice family therapist, trainer and consultant. His clinical experience includes adoption, foster care, chemical dependency, couples therapy, physical and sexual abuse. His current areas of specialization are kinship care and transracial adoptions. Dr. Crumbley received his masters and doctorate in social work from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Crumbley has delivered expert testimony and briefings, provided training and consultation nationally and internationally, and presented and consulted on transracial adoptions and kinship care for television programs and newspaper articles. He is a published author, has produced a series of training videos for parents and professionals on transracial adoptions and kinship care, and has an on-line course on kinship care.

Thursday, September 18, 2014
Lunch Plenary Panel
Traditions, Legacies, and the Future: Kinship Care Across Generations

CWLA brings together a panel of experts to provide unique assessments reflecting the multi-generational nature and system complexities of kinship care. Panelists will share broad perspectives serving as the foundation to support values, practices, policies, and research to date, as well as to highlight essential support and stability for children, youth, and all members of their kinship families.

Panelists will represent a perspective on (1) the beginning of kinship care as an informal and formal family and child welfare practice; (2) trends and learning from research over the past 30 years; (3) past, present, and future legislation that supports or is needed to support kinship families; and (4) next steps from the viewpoint of kinship families and communities.

Carol Stack - Opening Speaker & Facilitator

Anthropologist, Carol Stack, is an Emeritus Professor of Social and Cultural Studies in Education at the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently a Visiting Scholar at Duke University. She is author of All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community and Call To Home: African Americans Reclaim the Rural South. She writes on urban and rural poverty, family policy, social inequality, and on gender, welfare, youth, and low-wage work in the U.S.

The Honorable Leah Landrum Taylor

Leah Landrum Taylor is an elected Arizona State Senator for District 27. She currently serves on the Education and Commerce, Energy and Military Committees, the CPS Oversight Committee and the Governor's CARE Team. Senator Landrum Taylor has previously served on numerous committees including: Economic Development, Public Safety and Human Services, Veterans and Military Affairs, Adoption and Foster Care, and Homelessness, as well as the Governor's Child Protective Services Task Force. Landrum Taylor is well known for championing foster care and adoption issues, and kinship care legislation.

James Gleeson

Dr. James P. Gleeson is an Associate Professor at the Jane Addams College of Social Work, University of Illinois at Chicago. He has extensive experience as a child welfare practitioner, administrator, consultant, and researcher. He has been principal investigator for a number of federal and state funded child welfare research, curriculum development, and training projects including a number of projects funded by the U.S. Children's Bureau. His research and publications focus on informal and formal kinship care, kinship care policy and practice, co-parenting in kinship care, how child welfare workers learn, and evaluation of child welfare programs and practice.

Sylvie de Toledo

Sylvie deToledo is a licensed clinical social worker. She is the founder of Grandparents As Parents (GAP), a non-profit organization to help relative caregivers, and continues to work with GAP in the capacity of Clinical Director as well as a Board Member. She co-authored the book Grandparents As Parents, A Survival Guide for Raising a Second Family. A second edition of the book has just been released. She is a nationally recognized expert on issues relating to relative caregivers, and has been interviewed by both national and local newspapers, magazines, and radio stations.

Friday, September 19, 2014
Closing Lunch Plenary
Building Communities of Support for Kinship Families

Keynote Speaker
The Honorable Ernestine S. Gray
Chief Judge
Orleans Parish Juvenile Court, Section "A"
New Orleans, LA

The Honorable Ernestine S. Gray has been serving as Judge of Orleans Parish Juvenile Court since November, 1984. Judge Gray currently serves as Chief Administrative Judge of the Court. She is the Past President of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and the National CASA Association. She firmly believes in the strong bond of family and the value of children. She wants to be remembered as being important in the lives of children, not because of her temperament as a stern judge, but because of her unwavering advocacy for children.

Building Communities of Support for Kinship Families
Successful collaboration among human service systems, private service providers and communities is critical to advancing the effectiveness of supports for children and kinship families. Communities should have an active leadership role in supporting kinship families to achieve positive child and family outcomes.