WHEN: November 12, 2024 at 11:30 AM

WHERE: Brewer's Alley, 124 N Market St, Frederick, MD 21701

COST: FREE!

Lunch and Learn with C.A.S.E
Join the Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.) for an exciting lunch and learn. Holidays can be time of both joy and sadness for adopted children and teens, exacerbating feelings of loss and difference. Attendees will learn about the challenges of navigating the holidays for adoptees, foster youth, and kinship families.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER:

Tony, a former foster youth and adoptee, was adopted by a same sex couple in the mid 1990’s. He writes about his experiences growing up as both an interracial adoptee and as a child growing up in a same sex headed household in his memoir “The Son With Two Moms.”

Today, Tony is an advocate for families like his, having served on the Board of Directors for organizations that serve to highlight adoptive families from diverse upbringings, and working with individual families in both pre and post adoptive placements. A thought leader in adoption, Tony has been invited to be a speaker at conferences on adoption and foster care throughout the nation, especially those involving interracial placements.

Tony completed his Masters thesis in Sociology on the psychology of children within the same sex headed household in 2013, and in the fall of 2017 was awarded a full scholarship to begin his PhD studies in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County, where he has begun work on his dissertation, which focuses on social connectedness among interracial adoptees.

In his time as Training Specialist at C.A.S.E, Tony has designed innovative training curriculums that help families and professionals respond to evaluation and assessment tools that encapsulate holistic pictures of adoptees and foster youth.