The symposium follows with a presentation by Professor Bernadine Dohrn, director of the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University Law School, on the ethical issues stakeholders face. The conference will close with a summary by the Boston Globe's Adam Pertman. Professor Kent Markus, director of the Dave Thomas Center for Adoption Law at Capital University Law School, indicated that it is the center's unique status that attracted the distinguished array of presenters and registrants to the conference. Getting all the players involved in permanency placement decisions to respect and understand each other's roles and to maximize collaboration is a major challenge. If we can play a role in showing how that can be done so as to reduce the time kids wait for good homes, our center will have provided a substantial public service.
Limited space is still available at the symposium.
Lead sponsors for the symposium are Wolfe Associates and the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. The center has identified one family that has experienced such problems and is willing to talk, on the record, to media sources about how the system works and how it could improve.