Dear Colleague: I am writing today to tell you about a relatively new nonprofit organization that you may not know much about yet, though you may well recognize the names of our team members and Senior Research Fellows, as they include some of the most-accomplished thought leaders, researchers, trainers, speakers, educators, organizational and communications specialists, and policy experts in the field of child welfare. Together, we have formed the National Center on Adoption and Permanency (NCAP) because we believe deeply that the time has come to make fundamental, systemic, long-term changes to benefit the children and families we all serve – and we truly believe that, together, we can make that goal a reality.

To read the full announcement, click here.

Posted January 26, 2015 in the Huffington Post:

Finding safe, permanent homes for children in foster care -- usually through adoption when they cannot return to their families of origin -- has become a federal mandate and a national priority during the past few decades. That's obviously a very good thing, but there's a too-little-discussed downside to this positive trend: Far too little attention is being paid to serving children after placement to ensure that they can grow up successfully in their new families and so that their parents can successfully raise them to adulthood.

Notice the use of the word "successfully" twice in the last paragraph. It's the key. It's also the founding principle of a new organization I'm proud to lead, the National Center on Adoption and Permanency (NCAP). Our mission is to move policy and practice in the U.S. beyond their current concentration on child placement to a model in which enabling families of all kinds to succeed -- through education, training and support services -- becomes the bottom-line objective.


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Posted January  15, 2015 in Cal State Monterey Bay News:

Kathryn England-Aytes, a lecturer in psychology, has joined a newly created national organization that serves the needs of children.

Dr. England-Aytes will serve as a consultant with the National Center on Adoption and Permanency, an organization that provides information, resources and services relating to adoption, foster care and child welfare.

Former Kinship Center CEO Carol Biddle is the managing director; Adam Pertman, former president of the Donaldson Adoption Institute, is the founder and president.

Her work with the center “fits into my own research interests on historical trauma and links with contemporary behavior, particularly in educational settings, in Indian Country,” she said.

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