Working with Parents and Families
Dates: November 13 & 20, December 4, 2025
Time: 12-2pm EST/11am-1pm CST/ 9-11am PST
Faculty: Laura Ornelas, LCSW, and Lynne White Dixon, LCSW
This 3-session, 6-hour course will dig into one of the most challenging yet critical areas of adoption competence: working with family systems. From empowering parents to managing family dynamics to considerations of all children, this course will be heavy on practice with peers to increase skills and confidence as well as understanding of what to prioritize in treatment when.
About the Faculty:
Laura Ornelas, LCSW is a licensed clinical social worker, with a master’s degree in social work from the University of Southern California. She has been working in the field of foster care and adoption for 30 years and has been instrumental in the startup of multiple programs throughout California. She has been immersed in all angles of child placement and public and private adoptions in Los Angeles, and has worked with children of all ages, specializing in the birth-to-5 population, as well as with widely diverse families. After a decade of child placement work, Laura was inspired to support families post placement on their lifelong journeys. For nearly a decade, Laura served as the Regional Director of Mental Health Services for Kinship Center, during which time she designed and oversaw specialty mental health clinics for children who had been adopted and/or were being raised by kinship caregivers. Having studied with the leaders in attachment and trauma-informed care, she created a powerful clinical model rooted in relationship-based healing. In 2018, Laura was asked to join the team at C.A.S.E. to launch the C.A.S.E. Academy – Elevating Clinical Practice In Permanency for mental health professionals. Laura educates parents and professionals across the country about the effects of ruptures in relationships and best practices in child welfare and adoption. A seasoned and respected trainer, Laura has also written several works, including Effectively Addressing Mental Health Issues in Permanency-Focused Child Welfare Practice (Child Welfare Journal), Attachment Through the Senses (Fostering Families Today) and numerous white papers, including Childhood Trauma: A Multi-Dimensional Approach and Yoga as Trauma Treatment for Children. She is also a contributing curriculum developer and master trainer for ACT: An Adoption & Permanency Curriculum for Child Welfare and Mental Health Professionals and Pathways to Permanence 2: Parenting Children Who Have Experienced Trauma and Loss. Most recently, Laura was the lead writer and trainer of trainers and consultant for the federally funded NTDC, the National Training and Development Curriculum for foster and adoptive parents. Laura remains passionate about broadening collective understanding of children’s development to include loss, trauma, attachment, and intersecting identities.
Lynne White Dixon, LCSW has spent over 40 years as a therapist, trainer and consultant. She’s provided clinical services to children, adolescents, young adults and their families in the areas of community mental health, child welfare and adoptions, private practice and higher education. She has expertise in adoptions, permanency and trauma and is a Lead Trainer for Seneca Center’s ACT Training, a nationally recognized adoption and permanency curriculum for child welfare and mental health professionals. Lynne is the founder and former Coordinator of the MSW Trainee and Intern Program at California State University Monterey Bay’s, Personal Growth and Counseling Center, where she trained and supervised MSW graduate students and post-master’s interns for 20 years. In addition, Lynne is an Adjunct Faculty with CSU Monterey Bay’s Dept of Social Work, where she teaches trauma informed practice with children and adolescents.
Lynne contributed two chapters to Sharon Kaplan Roszia and Allison Davis Maxon’s book Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency: A Comprehensive Guide to Promoting Understanding and Healing in Adoption, Foster Care, Kinship Families and Third Party Reproduction. Lynne’s chapters focused on the Seven Core Issues and the African American Family and the Multi-Racial Family.
Working with Parents and Families Academy Course Registration
Registration for the November 2025 Academy course Working with Parents and Families
