Here's a bit about Meg and the Trust she works for. As the Director of Home Visiting Training and Professional Development, Meg oversees all initial and ongoing professional development for home visiting staff across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. During her tenure with the Children’s Trust, Meg has developed partnerships to strengthen and advance home visiting at the state and national levels. For seven years, Meg coordinated the Healthy Families Massachusetts training program. Prior to joi...
Jul 28, 2022•53 min•Ep. 176
Genevieve is the Executive Director of A Family in Bloom Adoption and also one of the Placement Supervisors. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Pennsylvania and received her Master’s Degree from the University of California Santa Barbara in Counseling Psychology in 1990 with a focus in Marriage, Family, and Children. Her 30 years of experience in the field encompasses work in child abuse prevention, University counseling programs; as a school psychologist, and for the last fift...
Jul 27, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 175
For more than 30 years, Rita Soronen has worked on behalf of abused, neglected and vulnerable children, providing leadership for local, state and national efforts, working to improve the juvenile justice and child welfare systems while striving to assure safe and permanent homes for North America’s children. Leading the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, a national nonprofit public charity, since 2001 and the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption-Canada since 2004, Ms. Soronen works to find perm...
Jul 25, 2022•51 min•Ep. 174
An adoptive mother of two now-adult children and a former foster parent, Gayle H. Swift is also a certified coach, co-founder of GIFT ( G rowing I ntentional F amilies T ogether). GIFT provides family coaching before, during and after adoption, a former teacher, and former newsletter editor. As a staunch adoptee-rights activist, Gayle has presented at the North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC) Conference. She believes in the power of books to inform, heal, and create community. Gay...
Jul 22, 2022•50 min•Ep. 173
Check out www.simonbenn.co.uk to book me as a speaker Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.
Jul 22, 2022•16 min•Ep. 172
Imani Z. Seunarine is Vice President of Behavioral Health and Outpatient Services at The Home for Little Wanderers https://www.linkedin.com/in/imani-seunarine-lmhc-1b870630/ Here's some more from their website: Here's a bit about The Home from their website: As the oldest child welfare agency in America, we have maintained our commitment to children since before the Civil War. Because every child deserves happiness, and no child should go through life alone. Each year, our community-based progra...
Jul 18, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 171
Joy Alessi is Policy Director of the Adoptee Rights Campaign, a diverse group of intercountry Adoptees and allies striving to educate, organize and advocate for U.S. citizenship. https://adopteerightscampaign.org/ https://www.facebook.com/citizenshipforalladoptees https://twitter.com/ARC_citizenship https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMgFx4PefOA0zwce09yRnjA https://www.instagram.com/adoptee_rights_campaign/ Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from th...
Jul 15, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 170
Check me out and get in touch at www.simonbenn.co.uk Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.
Jul 13, 2022•18 min•Ep. 169
Alex is a single mother through adoption and a nonprofit professional with over 20 years of experience. In 2011, Alex started her journey to become a mother through adoption and finds herself, 10 years after the birth of her daughter, happily sharing her daughter's life with her birth family. Alex believes strongly in the importance of belonging and that radical inclusion is critical to spark societal change. Her professional career has been an effort to include and uplift the less resourced. Sh...
Jul 12, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 168
Trisha and Rich work at Lifesong which seeks to mobilize the Church to care for the orphan, where each member can provide a unique and special service: some to adopt, some to care, some to give. With caring people like you and church partnerships, we support children through global orphan care ministries, Christian adoptive families, and foster care initiatives. https://lifesong.org https://www.facebook.com/lifesongfororphans https://twitter.com/lifesongorphans https://www.instagram.com/lifesong...
Jul 08, 2022•48 min•Ep. 167
Check out www.simonbenn.co.uk for more on my work and to book me as a speaker. Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.
Jul 07, 2022•12 min•Ep. 166
You can email Jane at jigsaw_51@yahoo.co.uk - please use Simon's Podcast in the subject line Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.
Jul 05, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 165
Grace Retreat Foster Care and Adoption Services is a licensing agency contracted by the State of Arizona. Grace Retreat is committed to support families through the process of becoming licensed and providing a home for children. We believe that by supporting the families, they are able to better support the children in their home. We are able to serve Pima, Cochise, and Pinal counties. Find out more at: https://www.graceretreatfostercare.org/ https://www.instagram.com/graceretreatfostercare Gues...
Jul 01, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 161
Check out www.simonbenn.co.uk for more on my work and to book me as a speaker. Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.
Jun 29, 2022•13 min•Ep. 164
Debbie B. Riley, LCMFT is the CEO and co-founder of the Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.), a nonprofit meeting the mental health needs of adoptive, foster and kinship families. A nationally recognized adoption expert and dynamic public speaker, Ms. Riley is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 40 years of professional experience, including extensive health care management, administrative expertise, designing and developing nationally acclaimed adoption-competent progr...
Jun 27, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 163
Jim Daly is president of Focus on the Family and host of its daily radio broadcast, heard by more than 6 million listeners a week on nearly 2,000 radio stations across the U.S. The show has been honored as Program of the Year by the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB). In March 2022, he celebrated his 33rd anniversary with the ministry. Daly’s personal journey from orphan to head of an international Christian organization dedicated to helping families thrive is a powerful story. Abandoned by h...
Jun 02, 2022•28 min•Ep. 162
Laurie is Executive Director of Heart Gallery NYC. Heart Gallery NYC , a non profit organization founded in 2006, utilizes photography to raise awareness of, and recruit permanent, loving adoptive families for children in foster care in New York City. In collaboration with the NYC Administration for Children’s Services and the foster provider agencies, Heart Gallery NYC collaborates with notable photographers, who donate their talents to create beautiful portraits of children in need of adoptive...
May 30, 2022•59 min•Ep. 160
Too Black to be White, and too White to be Black. Billy Williams was raised in Los Angeles, California in a loving home. His Teamster father and stay-at-home mother did their best to give Billy the charmed life that every child dreams about. Karate classes taught by Chuck Norris, designer clothes, and access to the upper echelon of Black society, Billy seemed to have it all. But, sometimes, what you see, is a cover for more sinister secrets that lay just below the surface. Follow Billy as he exp...
May 27, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 161
As an adoptive mom, Terri knows how fortunate she is to have her daughter, and also how very rare her story is. Not quite ten years into raising her daughter, she did some research and found that less than one percent of girls facing unplanned pregnancy choose adoption for their babies. Digging into the reasons why that is so, Terri conducted several focus groups in her home and discovered that most women facing unplanned pregnancy simply don’t realize that adoption is an option. They believe th...
May 23, 2022•51 min•Ep. 159
Katie is the founder of OrphanWise, an alumna of Lee University and has a Master’s Degree in Holistic Child Development. She worked as a preschool teacher for six years and served a term as an AmeriCorps VISTA with Habitat for Humanity. She moved to Paraguay in 2015 and spent three years working in a children’s home, where she served as director of the home and house mother. She also taught English in the on-campus middle school and high school. Since becoming a TBRI Practitioner in 2018, Katie ...
May 16, 2022•51 min•Ep. 158
Here's a bit about Peter from his website. Qualified as a Chartered Certified Accountant in 1999. I qualified as an NLP Practitioner in 2012. In 2017, I qualified as a Personal Performance coach with The Coaching Academy, obtaining a distinction (the highest grade available with Europe’s leading coach trainers). I have studied many self development teachers including Stephen Covey. I have also studied many spiritual teachers including Dr Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Gabby Bernstein and Michael Nei...
May 10, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 157
Katie serves 10.18 Strategy from a wealth of experience gained from her career as an entrepreneur, business consultant, executive officer, and strategist over the last seventeen years. Before founding 10.18 Strategy, Katie was a business consultant for over ten years, serving both for-profit and non-profit leaders with innovative strategies that brought solutions to complex problems. Katie has served on the board of directors of multiple non-profit organizations bringing both national impact and...
May 03, 2022•58 min•Ep. 156
Here's bit about Stef from his website In 2013, my life had crashed around my ears. After struggling with a lifetime of anxiety and depression, my marriage broke down and I was contemplating losing everything I loved and had worked so hard for so many years. I was at an all time low, I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat and could not find a way out of the black hole in front of me, I could not find any hope for the present or the future. By chance, I came across a book - 'The Inside Out Revolution' by...
Apr 29, 2022•55 min•Ep. 155
Here's a bit about Clare from her website "Hello my name is Clare. For a long time, I wasn’t at ease with who I thought I was. I felt anxious and worried that people would think I was stupid. I worried about getting things wrong. I held myself back in case I would mess things up. I felt stressed, ill at ease, apprehensive. I didn’t like myself or how I was in the world. I spent many many years reading, studying, attending courses, talking to people to try to find a way to feel better about mysel...
Apr 26, 2022•54 min•Ep. 154
Founder of the Plus One Adoption Foundation, Inc., Michele Katz builds connections with charitable services in the space of adoption and fundraising, to help families come together and stay together. The organization’s goal to provide the resources in order to help place 2.5M children into loving families stems from the 2.5 million children lost in the Holocaust and the Jewish credence of mending a broken world—when you save a child, you save the world. Just as sure as she was that she would one...
Apr 21, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 153
Michele Kriegman is a storyteller by nature but she was missing her own backstory well into adulthood. Finding her birth-father helped complete it. During this session of the U.S. Supreme Court the focus of many of her public talks will be the Indian Child Welfare Act, a new battlefield in the culture wars, which played a pivotal role in her own story. She worked for many years in U.S. and Japanese journalism, including ABC News, iVillage.com, Lilith, Maine Public Radio, Nippon TV's morning show...
Apr 12, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 152
Here's a little about Kristine's organisation from her website: Hawaii International Child (HIC) (founding name, Hawaii International Child Placement and Family Services, Inc.), was established in 1975 by members of Hawai'i’s adoption community. HIC’s founding members came from a background of personal connection to international adoption. Some had parents who’d been adopted, others had adopted children themselves, or were raised with siblings who’d been adopted. In its early years, HIC worked d...
Apr 08, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 151
Astrid founded Adoption Mosaic. Here's a bit about her from their website: Astrid has a degree in sociology with an emphasis in adoption. For twenty plus years, she has traveled the country to lead youth groups, present workshops on transracial parenting, talking with children about adoption and various other workshops focusing on adoption. Prior to creating Adoption Mosaic, Astrid worked in both the private and public sectors of various adoption organizations such the Oregon Post Adoption Resou...
Apr 05, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 150
Nicole Ward Moore is a Board Certified Adoption Attorney and Florida Supreme Court Certified Family Mediator who manages and operates the Orlando office. Nicole has been practicing with the firm since opening the Orlando office in 2005. Nicole practices exclusively in the area of adoption law throughout the State of Florida and in conjunction with out-of-state placements. Nicole also represents adoptive parents in adoption finalizations and represents several adoption agencies in private adoptio...
Apr 01, 2022•51 min•Ep. 149
Stephanie K. Sterling, MSW, LCSW is the Director of Family Services at Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Baton Rouge. Stephanie received her MSW degree from Tulane University in 1996. She holds a 90-hour post graduate certification in Adoption and Foster Care Competence. Stephanie has experience with inpatient, outpatient, and primary care behavioral health as well as pregnancy counseling. She serves on the Governor’s Children’s Cabinet Advisory Board, the Children’s Code Adoption Subcommitte...
Mar 28, 2022•53 min•Ep. 148
