What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Children’s Development in the Context of Their Parents’ Relationships
Francesca Adler-Baeder
Francesca Adler-Baeder
Keynote: Opening Session
Tuesday, May 19, 8:30 – 10 am
Adult relationship quality, both married and non-married, is a factor that directly and indirectly impacts child and adolescent development, yet is rarely a target of impact for family life programming. A systems approach calls for the consideration of the interplay of multiple factors and cultural differences in our work with families and youth.
Learn from research and practical experiences working with a broad spectrum of families on ways to better understand and empower families under stress to nurture their children. Francesca Adler-Baeder, professor of human development and family studies at Auburn University in Alabama, will explain this and tell of a current statewide initiative in which practitioners and researchers have built real partnerships for effecting positive change.
Adler-Baeder’s research interests focus on families under stress and children's experiences in diverse family types. She has worked for more than 20 years with organizations such as the Cooperative Extension System and the U.S. Army to bridge research and practice through program design, curriculum development and applied research. Current federally-funded projects include the Alabama Community Healthy Marriage Initiative, a five-year project designed to raise awareness of the importance of healthy relationships and marriages for children’s well being, to provide access to educational resources and to document program effects among youth, nonmarried parents, and married couples; Healthy Couples, Healthy Children: Targeting Youth, a five-year study of relationship education for a diverse sample of youth; and Family Connections in Alabama, a three-year study of educational services for low-income minority parents. Adler-Baeder serves as co-director of the National Extension Relationship and Marriage Education Network (NERMEN) and oversees the National Stepfamily Resource Center. She regularly provides family life information to national media and is a frequent speaker for both academic and lay audiences on topics related to parenting under stress, stepfamily dynamics, couples and marriage education, and innovative university-community partnerships.
Stories from the By-ways of Life
4-H Family Strengthening Distinguished Lecture
Bonnie Braun
Dr. Bonnie Braun
Keynote Presentation
Wednesday, 20 May, 10 am-12 noon
“Stories from the By-ways of Life: Tales of Hopes, Dreams and Things In-between” combines both quantitative and qualitative findings from a 17-state, longitudinal research study. Increase your understanding of the hopes, dreams and experiences of rural, low-income mothers and their families by attending this compelling presentation. As in the oral storytelling tradition, mothers will tell of challenges they face in raising children, making ends meet, food security, health, employment and civic engagement within the communities where they live.
Bonnie Braun, Ph.D., Herschel S. Horowitz Endowed Chair and director, Center for Health Literacy, University of Maryland-College Park School of Public Health, will present this new work in CYFAR 2009’s 4-H Family Strengthening Distinguished Lecture.
Braun was a 10-year Missouri 4-H member who married her 4-H competitor. She became Virginia’s first female 4-H director and held positions responsible for family and consumer sciences, community development and agriculture. Over her 32-year Extension career, she has held academic and administrative appointments in four states and at the USDA.
Throughout her career, Braun has focused on reducing barriers among individuals, families and communities. Her research, curriculum development, program evaluation and civic engagement education are dedicated to increasing the likelihood that wise decisions will produce desired quality of living.
Most recently, she was named the first Herschel S. Horowitz Endowed Chair and director of the Center for Health Literacy in the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health and first endowed chair for Maryland Cooperative Extension. She retains her Extension appointment as a family policy specialist in the Department of Family Science. Her work is now centered on improving health outcomes by reducing health literacy burdens on individuals, families and communities.
Braun is known for her leadership within Extension and in professional organizations. Most recently, she served as president of the 100 year-old American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences.
Braun’s lecture is sponsored in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, who believe that children do better when families do better and families do better in supportive communities. The goal of this lecture is to share research and practical examples of the reality of this statement and what this might mean for youth, families and communities.
Designing Systems that Match the Needs of Diverse Families: Focusing on Attachment, Culture and Trauma
Chandra Ghosh Ippen
Chandra Ghosh Ippen
Keynote: Closing Session
Thursday, May 21, 11 am—12:15 pm
As the U. S. becomes increasingly culturally diverse, there is an urgent need for practitioners to learn effective ways to work with children and families from multiple ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Effective approaches must integrate the many aspects of context that are associated with potential differences in perspectives and goals. This presentation examines how attachment, culture and trauma serve as key contextual forces that shape development and perspective. It will include a review of theoretical models and core concepts central to working with diverse populations.
Chandra Ghosh Ippen, Ph.D., is associate research director of the Child Trauma Research Program at the University of California, San Francisco and the Early Trauma Treatment Network, a member of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN). She has worked on seven longitudinal studies and has conducted treatment-outcome research on the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions with Spanish-speaking children and parents. She is co-author of Losing a Parent to Death: Guidelines for the Treatment of Traumatic Bereavement in Infancy and Early Childhood (2003). She wrote the chapter “The sociocultural context of infant mental health: Towards contextually congruent intervention,” which is part of the third edition of the Handbook of Infant Mental Health, and co-wrote the chapter “Rainbow of tears, souls full of hope: Cultural issues related to young children and trauma”, which discusses the importance of incorporating a cultural focus when working with young children who have experienced trauma. She serves as co-chair of Cultural Competence Consortium of the NCTSN.
