Submission
The 16th Annual Kids Are Worth It! Conference will be Sept. 10-11, at the Lexington Convention Center.
The conference is Kentucky's only multidisciplinary, statewide conference focusing on child abuse and neglect prevention. The conference provides an array of workshops featuring national and local experts (five national speakers and numerous local experts, including Kentucky's only two Board Certified Child Abuse Pediatricians). Workshops are designed to provide skill building opportunities for a variety of professionals. Continuing education credits for a number of licensed professionals, as well as for early childhood and Family Resource Youth Service Center clock hours, are available.
Although workshop and keynote presentations are designed to appeal to a wide variety of professions, there are several topics of particular interest to education professionals, particularly school counselors, social workers and psychologists.
Some of the critical topics experts will be addressing include providing effective supports to trauma victims, child abuse death prevention strategies, identification of suspicious injuries in children, synthetic and herbal substance abuse by youth and utilizing strength-based approaches with troubled youth. Thirty-six workshops and several keynote addresses have been planned.
To register or see a full listing of workshop and keynote topics, click here http://www.pcaky.org/kids_are_worth_it.html.
National speakers include:
Tonier Cain
Her life includes 83 arrests and 66 convictions yet hundreds of requests to serve as the keynote speaker in front of audiences that include the United Nations, the President of the United States, government agencies, teachers, community and civic organizations, and convicted felons. She has been featured in the documentary “Behind Closed Doors: Trauma Survivors and the Psychiatric System,” and the subject of the award winning film “Healing Neen.”
Shannon Stotenbur Wing
Ms. Stotenbur-Wing has worked in the area of child welfare/human services for the past 15 years, specializing in child abuse prevention and infant/child death investigation, policy and practice. Shannon’s focus has been in the area of infant/child death surveillance and prevention as the Director of Michigan Child Death Review at the Michigan Public Health Institute. Shannon holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Ferris State University and a Master’s Degree in Clinical Social Work, with a specialty in child welfare from Michigan State University
Steve Yager
Mr. Yager is the Director of the Children’s Services Administration at the Michigan Department of Human Services. He graduated from Cedarville University with a BA in Psychology. He has more than 20 years of child welfare experience within the department, beginning as a children’s protective services investigator and later serving as a children’s services program manager and team leader of the Peer Review Project in the mid and late 90’s.
Kevin O'Brien
Kevin O’Brien is a CyberTipline Supervisor in the Exploited Children Division (ECD) at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Mr. O’Brien has handled nearly 42,000 CyberTipline reports, resulting in numerous arrests of child sexual offenders.
He has participated in various law enforcement investigative training programs on high technology crimes, online child sexual exploitation, and investigative and analytical skills development. He has provided extensive technical assistance to law enforcement in the United States, as well as abroad, on cases of child sexual exploitation, especially Internet crimes against children.
Charlie Appelstein
Mr. Appelstein, M.S.W. is a nationally prominent youth care specialist and author whose primary focus is working with children and youth with serious emotional and behavioral problems. President of Appelstein Training Resources, LLC, Charlie trains and consults all over the United States as well as internationally, with treatment facilities, foster care programs, parent groups, schools, and detention centers. He has authored three youth care books that are widely used within the field, includingNo Such Thing as a Bad Kid: Understanding and Responding to the Challenging Behavior of Troubled Children and Youth.
For questions or more information, please call 859-225-8879.