Breakout Session 1 | Friday, 10:45 - 11:45 am
Featured Breakout 1: Home Team Starts Here: Forming Attachment After Trauma | Scott Watters
We serve a relational God. Attachment relationships mirror the relationship that we have with God, our ultimate attachment figure. In this session, Scott Watters will lead participants through the attachment journey and how it can help us better understand the breadth and width of God’s love.
Helping Impulsive Kids Make Better Decisions | Chuck Hagele
Impulsive kids often make decisions that hurt them and their relationships. This session focuses on skills to slow down thinking while using skills that help them respond rather than react.
Burned Out: A Real Conversation for the Weary | Chris Johnson
Synopsis coming soon!
Wired Differently: Understanding FASD, Trauma, and the Brain | Sandra Flach
This introductory workshop covers the impact of prenatal exposure to alcohol on the brain/body, outlines the primary, secondary, and tertiary characteristics of FASD, and unpacks accommodations and strengths-based strategies for parents, caregivers, and professionals.
Setting Your Children Up for Success at School | Laura Adams
This interactive workshop empowers adoptive, foster, and kinship parents to partner with schools using the iCARE4 Schools Connection Kit™. Participants will explore trauma-informed tools that support emotional regulation, identity, and connection at school and home. Learn how to advocate effectively, use shared strategies with educators, and create healing-centered support systems for your child’s success.
Beyond Eye Rolls: Pivotal Conversations with our Teens | Will & CarrieAnn Standfest
Talking to teenagers about tough topics can feel like walking a tightrope. How do we address big emotions, set boundaries, and maintain connection? In this interactive workshop, we'll explore proven strategies from Crucial Conversations and other material to help parents approach difficult discussions with confidence. Through real-life examples, audience participation, and practical tools, you'll learn how to navigate high-stakes conversations.
Your Church Can Do This: Practical Ways to Engage in Foster Care & Adoption | CarePortal & Replanted
Discover simple, practical ways your church can step into the foster and adoption space. Join leaders from CarePortal and Replanted to explore tools, strategies, and real stories that will help your Home Team meet needs, build community, and support families—no matter your church’s size or starting point.
Breakout Session 2 | Friday, 1:00 - 2:00 pm
Featured Breakout 2: Trust-Based Relational Intervention in Your Home | Kimberly Glaudy
Synopsis coming soon!
Carrying our Unique Grief | Susan and Adam Paa
Although foster and adoptive parents are prepared this journey will be "hard", we are often poorly prepared for the grief and sadness we will encounter as foster and/or adoptive parents. This training will reframe our grief so we can better carrying our losses while finding the way forward.
Reclaiming Compassion | Lisa C. Qualls
Synopsis coming soon!
A Child’s Hunger for Connection | Chef Kibby
Hunger, the force that keeps us alive and weaves our lives together, can also isolate and divide us. Chef Kibby combines the latest in food-based neuroscience with his journey as a caregiver to show how a broader understanding of hunger can help you meet the social, emotional, mental, and behavioral challenges faced by the disconnected youth in your home.
Problematic Sexualized Behavior | Bethany Hall
Synopsis coming soon!
More Cowbell: Coming Alongside our Kids' Sensory Needs | Meredith Shuman
Sometimes trying to meet the sensory needs of our kids feels like aiming at a moving target. Join us in this workshop for practical tips, encouragement, and a little fun.
Brave Conversations: Race, Identity, and the Foster/Adoptive Journey | Adrienne Runnebaum, Shaq Hardy, Isaac Etter, Dolly Regier
A courageous space for foster, adoptive, and kinship families to explore race, identity, and cultural humility. This session invites honest dialogue, deep reflection, and practical tools for navigating transracial families. Leave encouraged and better equipped to raise children who feel seen, celebrated, and deeply known—rooted in the kind of belonging every home team is meant to provide.
Breakout Session 3 | Friday, 2:15 - 3:15 pm
Featured Breakout 3: Practical Parenting Tools for a Defiant Child | Bethany Hall
Synopsis coming soon!
Sacred Rhythms in a Chaotic Life: Finding What Actually Fits | Michael Mitchell
Synopsis coming soon!
Navigating the Needs of Teens and Young Adults | Scott Watters
Parenting teens and young adults can be one of the most challenging seasons of a parenting journey. Scott Watters takes an attachment perspective to navigating the relational needs of young people in the adolescent phases of life (ages 10-30) and how we might best support them as they form new and independent attachments.
Dealing With Big Behaviors | A TBRI® Approach | Daren Jones
What is trauma and how does it impact our kiddos? We will spend time understanding trauma, its impact, and how the TBRI® strategies help us respond to behaviors and create an environment of connection and safety.
Navigating Diagnosis with Hope | Meredith Shuman
When our kids get that important diagnosis, we wonder if it’s a blessing or a curse. What does it mean? How will we navigate this? And sometimes even just waiting for the diagnosis is just as hard. Join us for real conversations, community, and support.
Wounds that Whisper; The Deep Connection Between Trauma and Addiction | Melody Aguayo, Ph.D.
This workshop will discuss how early trauma creates a tendency toward addiction. We can see this pattern, even in very young adoptees. This workshop will give important information as well as practical steps to help our children create natural and healthy highs.
Neurofeedback Training as a Trauma Recovery Strategy | Dolly Regier
Neurofeedback often gets puzzled looks when it’s mentioned, as it’s a new concept for many. Yet, with NeurOptimal® Neurofeedback, anyone with a brain can benefit from brain training. For those who’ve discovered nonlinear neurofeedback, it’s been life-changing, especially as a trauma recovery strategy. This talk explores its history, how it works, session expectations, and my family’s inspiring journey.
Breakout Session 4 | Saturday, 8:00 - 8:50 am
Nurturing Spiritual Growth in Neurodivergent Kids | Kim Botto
Every child deserves to know they are loved by God and welcomed in His family—but traditional approaches to faith formation don’t always connect with neurodivergent kids. This workshop helps foster and adoptive parents explore creative, relational ways to nurture faith in ALL children. You’ll leave with practical tools to create meaningful spiritual rhythms that feel safe, accessible, and deeply personal.
Textured Hair Care | Tamekia Swint
Join us for a hands-on Textured Hair Care Workshop designed to equip parents and caregivers with the basics! Learn how to identify different hair types and textures, master foundational hair care techniques, and explore simple styling tips to keep hair healthy and beautiful. Perfect for beginners—build confidence, ask questions, and walk away ready to care for textured hair with love!
Rooted in Love: Strengthen Your Marriage | Eric Fridge
Adoption is a beautiful expression of love, faith, and commitment. Rooted in Love is a seminar designed for married couples considering adoption or already on the journey. Adjusting to life as an adoptive family can put strain on your marriage, this seminar will provide the encouragement, wisdom, and practical tools you need not to survive, but thrive.
Listening & Repair: Relational Practices to Strengthen Your Family | Kelly Raudenbush
Relationships are hard. Arguably, foster and adoptive parents know this more than most. Join with others to reflect on our experience of relationships, explore what the term attunement means, and practice in real time how we can offer and receive it through the tool of reflective listening and thoughtful repair.
Helping Children Embrace Their Stories | Kate Rietema
Does talking with your child about their story feel overwhelming? This interactive workshop will encourage and empower caregivers to take small pieces of their child’s history and turn them into treasured stories. Although all children benefit from the power of stories, this workshop is intended for parents of foster and adopted children ages ten and younger.
Tech & Trauma: How Screens Can Hinder—or Help—Connection | Chuck Hagele
We know technology has a lot of harmful effects, yet it can also be a tool to build connections. Discover ways to connect with your kids while increasing their felt safety.
Breakout Session 5 | Saturday, 10:45-11:45 am
Featured Breakout 4: Leading Kids With Love and Limits | Kim Botto
Guiding kids in their faith requires both clear boundaries and deep compassion—but most of us naturally lean toward either firm structure or gentle grace. In this workshop, explore how to lead kids with both love and limits, creating an environment where they feel secure, valued, and encouraged to grow.
Financial Assistance for Pre + Post-Adoption Expenses | Jared DeLong, Eric Fridge, Lifesong, Show Hope
Finances should never be an obstacle to a child having a forever family, yet studies show that the high cost of adoption and post-adoption expenses are one of the main barriers families face. Even as costs increase, there are many resources available to cover the majority of these costs. Learn more about grants, loans, fundraisers, and the adoption tax credit.
Attachment Styles in Adults: How We Show Up for Our Team | Angie Proctor & Pam Shepherd
Attachment patterns develop because of how we learned to relate to our caregivers and how our caregivers responded to us as infants and young children. These patterns remain with us and influence all our relationships. In this workshop we’ll learn each attachment style and learn how these patterns show up in marriages, parenting, jobs and more!
Supportively Transitioning Our Kids In and Out of Our Home | Susan & Adam Paa
Foster and adoptive parents have a unique responsibility in helping our kids transition into our home when placed with us and then out of our home when reunified with family. This session will provide practical tips and ideas to set you and your child up for success in this pivotal and sometimes overwhelming time.
Trust Based Relational Intervention for Teens | Kimberly Glaudy
Synopsis coming soon!
The Stories We Carry: A Birth Parent Panel | Janelle Basham
In this panel, birth mothers from unique backgrounds share their stories of placing a child for adoption. Their honest reflections offer deeper understanding, empathy, and practical ways to support birth moms. By listening to their voices, we not only honor their journey—but also the children they lovingly placed and will always hold in their hearts.
Healing for Every Heart: Finding Hope After Heartbreak | Jodi Jackson Tucker
Has foster care and adoption broken your heart? In this session, we will explore what God has said about how hearts can be healed, and press into the true source of healing. This session will include a time of guided prayer for participants to seek healing. Bring your cares and sorrows and leave with renewed hope.