Center for New York City Affairs at The New School presents

a Child Welfare Watch forum:

Baby Steps: Poverty, Chronic Stress, and New York's Youngest Children

 Friday, October 4, 8:30-10:30am

 Tishman Auditorium

Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street, Ground Floor

Chronic stress and early trauma shape the brain development of very young children. Increasingly, research shows that innovative, early-life work with infants, toddlers and their parents can help prevent the need for much more costly interventions later on. Can we reduce the likelihood of abuse, neglect and mental illness in stressed-out, low-income families? What kinds of targeted interventions are working? And how should government and nonprofits respond? A conversation with experts in the field, and the release of the latest edition of Child Welfare Watch.

 Keynote remarks by

Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., the Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor of Child Health and Development at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Harvard Graduate School of Education; Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital; and Director of the university-wide Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.

 Followed by a conversation with

Linda Lausell Bryant, executive director, Inwood House

Susan Chinitz, professor of clinical pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Piazadora Footman, parent; editorial assistant at Rise, a magazine written by and for parents in the child welfare system; and Chances for Children participant

Benita Miller, deputy commissioner of family permanency services, NYC Administration for Children's Services

 Moderated by

Andrew White, director, Center for New York City Affairs at The New School

 Admission is free, but you must RSVP.

The Child Welfare Watch project is made possible thanks to the generous support of the the Ira W. DeCamp Foundation, the Child Welfare Fund, the Viola W. Bernard Foundation, the Sirus Fund, the Pinkerton Foundation, the Prospect Hill Foundation and the Milano Foundation.