PASSION FOR ACTION:
BUILDING ON STRENGTH AND INNOVATIVE CHANGES
IN CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES

Prairie Child Welfare Consortium (PCWC)
4th BiAnnual Symposium

September 12-14, 2007
Regina Inn, Regina, SK

Early bird registration extended to August 31ST, 2007

Welcome to Passion for Action: Building on Strength and Innovative Changes in Child Welfare, the 4th bi-annual Symposium hosted by the Prairie Child Welfare Consortium (PCWC).

The PCWC is an inter-provincial and northern multi-sector, mainstream, First Nations and Metis network dedicated to collaboration for the purpose of advancing and strengthening education and training, research, policy development, practice and service delivery in the aid of at risk children and families in the prairie provinces and the Northwest Territories. From the time of these first steps, the development of the PCWC has been powerfully and fundamentally influenced by the urgent voices of Aboriginal people deeply concerned about the escalating numbers of their children and youth in the care of the state.

Passion for Action: Building on Strength and Innovative Changes in Child Welfare offers an exciting line up of training workshops, presentations and activities reflecting child and family services in the prairies and the north. The program will stimulate, facilitate and encourage ongoing conversations, networks, and collaborative partnerships. The Symposium schedule allows time, space, and means of communication for participants to connect, interact, share ideas and hopes, and develop action plans for ongoing work in one's home arena, together with others within and across institutional boundaries and mandates, and within the PCWC.

Passion for Action: Building on Strength and Innovative Changes in Child Welfare features keynote speakers addressing the urgent need to transform the child welfare system, as we know it. Workshops, panels, and story-telling sessions feature effective, innovative approaches to child and family services, education, policy and research. An exciting new feature this year training workshops offered on September 12. This day will have experts in the field provide specific training in a number of areas with community, family and youth. Please refer to the sidebars for program details.

The theme, Passion for Action: Building on Strength and Innovative Changes in Child Welfare has been influenced by The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Reconciliation movement in Child Welfare. These documents assert the urgent need to transform the child welfare system, as we know it. Transformation requires innovative changes and capacity building through strengthening of policies and practices that we know are supportive of child and family well-being and that are effective in bringing about change. The challenge of transformation calls each of us to participate in visionary, troublesome, 'courageous' conversations about child welfare - to do our part to bring about necessary change in practices and policies that create barriers to quality service. Best practices cannot wait for policy and funding decisions - the Symposium intends to facilitate 'Passion for Action'.