Relationship for life

Each year, the Institute of Open Adoption Studies hosts a Research-to-Practice Forum as part of its commitment to engaging with the out-of-home-care sector in an exchange of ideas and discussion of the latest research. The theme for 2019 focuses on what permanency means from a child’s perspective, and the lifelong importance of relationships between families involved in restoration, guardianship, Kinship care or open adoption.

The international keynote speaker for the 2019 Forum will be Professor Harold Grotevant, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Professor Grotevant is the principal investigator on the Minnesota/Texas Adoption Research Project, exploring the variations in openness and relationships between all members of the adoptive kinship network.

A range of other speakers from around Australia will build on the theme of the importance of quality relationships across the complexity of family networks in the out-of-home care system. The forum will feature sessions that combine research and practice perspectives on:

• connections for cultural identity
• sibling relationships
• supporting connections with birth family.

Attendance is by invitation. Anyone interested in taking part should email an enquiry to: esw.ioas@sydney.edu.au