Conference Details

Wednesday, May 23rd - Conference Opening Ceremonies

Greetings and Welcome
to
International Social Service
International Council Assembly and Conference

Welcome to Canada, welcome to Alberta and welcome to Banff
Welcome to our neighbors in the Americas and
Welcome to the World

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Opening Keynote
Office of Children's Issues U.S. Department of State

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was pleased to announce the appointment of Ambassador Susan S. Jacobs as Special Advisor to the Office of Children's Issues. Special Advisor Jacobs will actively engage with foreign government officials to protect the welfare and interests of children. Ambassador Jacobs will provide some detail about the newly created Office of Children's Issues in the U.S. Department of State.

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Thursday, May 24th - Conference Break-out Sessions

Immersion in the "West Africa Network for the Protection of Children"

The West Africa Network is one of the programmes of the Swiss Foundation of ISS. It is about creating regional cooperation between local authorities, the civil society and West African countries. Its aim is to identify migrating, at risk minors; to protect them and reintegrate them to a family environment supported by an educational or professional project.

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South African Child Protection Project (SACPP)

The South African Child Protection Project (SACPP) is a five-year initiative with the goal to enhance the provision and future development of child protection systems and services in South Africa. The Child Welfare League of Canada is working in collaboration with the South African Department of Social Development to achieve this outcome.

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ADVOCACY FOR CHILDREN
A Guide to Advocacy for Children and Youth

Child advocacy is based on the belief that all children have the right to be cared for, to be safe and to access specific services to which they are entitled.

Advocacy goes beyond either service delivery or social action. Advocacy can't always bring about needed policy changes, but it can ensure that mandated services do exist and that children have access to those services and that the services do what they are supposed to do.

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INTER-COUNTRY SURROGACY
The Next Frontier of Social Justice and Child Welfare

Is international surrogacy replacing international adoption?

With the advancement of sophisticated reproductive techniques there is an increase in the use of surrogates across the world. On its most fundamental level surrogacy can be interpreted as an economic transaction with complex motivations. We need to apply the social work lens to this subject and reflect on the interrelated needs of the biological and prospective parent, the surrogate, donor and the child. It raises the question; will the demand on international surrogacy be greater than adoptions and what are the implications for social work practice and intervention. The presentation will explore these issues and locate social work within current international surrogacy systems.

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Physical Punishment
Risks to Children, Confusion for Parents, Conundrum for Professionals

Parents in every country want their children to grow up to be respectful people and productive citizens. For immigrant parents, however, this hope can fade to confusion, even fear, when crossing a national border feels like it has thrown them into unknown and threatening child-rearing waters. There is now clear and compelling research evidence that physical punishment plays no useful role in raising children and poses only risks to their development. The international research that identifies these risks will be discussed in this presentation.

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The Participation of Children in Cross-border Mediation

The abusive removal of a child from his family network by a parent does not necessarily mean the end of intra-family influence capabilities. Family members can still be helped to interact with and possibly to help each other re-orient their family reorganization plans.

This presentation will analyze conditions facilitating this practice and its linkage to institutional cross-border work. Finally, it will propose methods for professional preparation and the development of remote family interview technical expertise for family mediators.

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The Rights of Donor Conceived Persons

There are many similarities between adoptees and donor conceived children, the most obvious being the importance of identity. The number of donor conceived children continues to grow throughout the world, but only recently are some countries implementing legislation to ensure information is held about donors and donor conceived children in order to meet their natural need to know about their genetic and medical history.

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International Family Mediation (IFM) - Dealing with Parent-Child Abductions

IMF is a confidential process in which a qualified and impartial third party helps those families experiencing situations of rift or separation while coming from another country or residing and/or being native of two different countries. Family Mediation supports parents and children going through family change and disruption. It is a recognized mode of conflict resolution that helps people find solutions to their problems through informal and negotiated settlements.

International situations mostly concern cases of child abduction and/or non-respect of visiting rights by one of the parents. The goal of this process is to re-establish communication and to reach agreements that are in accordance with the respective needs of the parents and, in particular, the needs of their children, in a spirit of cooperation and co-responsibility.

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Shift: The Project to End Domestic Violence

Domestic and sexual violence are injustices that pervade every aspect of society. What can happen when research, community development, policy change and the wisdom and involvement from the field are brought together to make change happen? This presentation will introduce two major components of the Shift project - the research agenda and a community learning strategy with a focus on ethno-cultural communities

Shift is trying to break new ground in ending Domestic Violence through a primary prevention focus.

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Safe and effective exchange of child protection information across international borders

International adoption has progressed from being a private to a legal matter and today it is now also becoming a global social issue.

Whilst international adoption as it currently exists came into being about 30 or 40 years ago, there is no doubt that it has become considerably more complex. It is therefore becomes necessary to put systems in place which guarantee that these new style adoptions occur under the best possible conditions and it is essential that the best assessment possible is made of the child's capacity to benefit from the adoption and to ensure as accurate a matching as possible with the adopters' home situation and wishes

The evolution of international adoption is opening up new fields of development in social work. Monitoring children between their country of origin and their host country is becoming vital for complex adoptions.

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A United Nations framework
Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children

There is consensus that children in care are one of the most vulnerable populations.

The UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children (2009), welcomed by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the UN General Assembly, represent a global consensus on the best practice in this area and are children's rights focused orientation to alternative care. They set out desirable orientations for policy and practice and seek to ensure that children do not find themselves in out-of-home care unnecessarily and that the type and quality care provided is appropriate and to the rights and specific needs of the child concerned. Canada has recently welcomed the Guidelines and is in the preliminary stages of raising awareness of them with those who work in the provision of alternative care.

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Utilizing Data to Illustrate Best Practice
International Family Finding and Engagement for Children in the U.S. Foster Care System

ISS-USA in partnership with Rutgers University and the State of New Jersey's child welfare system (DYFS) developed a three year pilot program to train social workers, legal professionals and judges on international family finding and engagement in order to improve permanency outcomes for children in foster care.

A comprehensive evaluation model was developed to collect data about the impact of training on casework and courtroom practice, the retention of learned information, and the long-term outcomes for children in foster care who have a potential family connection outside of the United States.

The objective of this session is to share the first comprehensive data collected to identify what intervention methods, training, technical assistance, awareness campaigns, are most effective in developing social work best practice.

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Refugee children:
the case of unaccompanied minors

In Montreal, the CSSS de la Montagne's Programme regional d'accueil et d'intégration des demandeurs d'asile (PRAIDA) has the regional mandate to respond to the needs of asylum seekers in general and more particularly to respond to the needs of unaccompanied minors or children arriving in Canada without their parents or adult guardians.

Social work practice is constantly challenged by problems emerging from globalization. Social workers intervening with refugees on the front line have no choice but to work beyond their national borders. They are confronted daily with international issues, with cultural diversity and with very different values and perceptions from their own.

This reality calls for a major adaptation of traditional social-work paradigms, concepts and mainstream intervention models

PRAIDA's intervention models are grounded in a novel social work approach integrating knowledge of international conventions, of national law, of cross cultural research and of trauma intervention.

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The Detention of Children and Vulnerable Adults Seeking Asylum in Canada:
Results from a Multi-site, Mixed-methods Study

Individuals whose basic human rights are violated in their country of origin may flee to a safe country such as Canada and ask for refugee status. Some of these refugee claimants (or asylum seekers) are detained upon arrival in Canada, usually because of inadequate identity documents. Clinical case studies, reports by human rights organizations, and post-release studies have consistently found high levels of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress among asylum seekers who have undergone detention in other countries. This study is the first to examine the experiences and psychological status of child and adult asylum seekers held in detention in Canada

This presentation will describe the current practices of detention for asylum seekers in the Canadian context and compare it broadly with other Western nations. It will also provide a broader understanding of the key implications for social services providers who work with refugee adults and children.

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Friday, May 25th - Morning Session

EXPANDING THE CIRCLE IN THE AMERICAS
AND IN THE WORLD
A Global Panel -- Plenary Presentation

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Friday, May 25th - Closing Luncheon

Closing Keynote
David Morley

David Morley joined UNICEF Canada as President and CEO on March 14, 2011. Prior to his appointment as president and CEO of UNICEF Canada, Mr. Morley had served as President and CEO of Save the Children Canada.

Mr. Morley's extensive experience in international cooperation began when he volunteered with street children in Central America in the 1970s. Since then he has worked in community development and humanitarian projects in Congo, Zambia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Mexico, Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Brazil. From 1980 to 1998 he was Executive Director of Pueblito, a Canadian/Latin American NGO which promotes the rights and well-being of children.

From 1998 - 2005, Mr. Morley was Executive Director of the Canadian section of Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors without Borders. In 2005 he was chosen by the Right Hon. Adrienne Clarkson and John Ralston Saul to serve as the founding Executive Director of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, as President of the Ontario Council for International Cooperation, and as a mentor with the Trudeau Foundation. He and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, the Brazilian-based Abrinq Foundation for the Rights of Children and is on the Advisory Board of McGill University's Institute for the Study of International Development.

David Morley's writing on international issues has appeared in the newspapers across Canada and around the world, and he is a frequent commentator on radio and television. His most recent book, Healing Our World: Inside Doctors without Borders, was released in 2007 in Canada, South Korea and the United States, where it has won a number of awards.

In recognition of his work in international cooperation, the Canadian government named him a recipient of the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal.