Join CASCW in kicking off the new year with this half-day webinar hosted by our Permanency and Adoption Competency Certificate (PACC) program. This training is geared toward PACC alumni, as well as professionals working across child welfare and mental health interested in learning how to better support kids impacted by foster care and adoption through the telling of their own stories. Leading policy and practice experts, each with their own lived experience, will provide a half-day virtual training on Therapeutic Life Story (TLSWi) and Lifebook work with plenty of tips and tools to add to your practice - along with free CEUs. 

JaeRan Kim PhD, MSW, was born in South Korea and adopted to the United States in 1971.While completing her PhD in Social Work at the University of Minnesota, she helped found the PACC program, and is an ongoing contributor to curriculum. JaeRan is a renowned adoption scholar, speaker and writer, including her blog Harlow’s Monkey. She has worked in foster care/adoption (both public and private), with at-risk young moms, and with adults with disabilities in residential care. JaeRan is currently Associate Professor and BASW chair in the School of Social Work and Criminal Justice at the University of Washington – Tacoma.

Richard Rose is the founder and Director of Therapeutic Life Story Work International (TLSWi). Throughout his career, Richard has brought his lived experience as an adoptee to his work with children and their families in out of home care and within birth family placements, with the aim of enabling these placements to become healthy and nurturing. Richard is the author of The Child’s Own Story – Life Story Work with Traumatised Children (2004); Life Story Therapy with Traumatised Children – A Model for Practice (2012) and Innovative Therapeutic Life Story Work (2017) and trains regularly across England, Australia and the United States.

Elliott Odendahl, MSW, LICSW is a therapist at Sankalpa Therapy & Wellness Center and PACC alumni, facilitator and curriculum contributor.  Elliott has had the privilege of working with children, youth, individuals and families of diverse backgrounds who are experiencing behavioral and mental health needs, disruptions in attachment and family relationships, trauma, as well as those experiencing the negative impacts of systemic and structural bias and racism. Elliott has a special passion for providing support and services to adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, resource parents and anyone from the adoption/foster kinship network. As an adoptee herself, it is an honor to be able to give back to the community she is also a part of.