FOUNDER
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Jeanette Yoffe, M.A., M.F.T., Founder and Executive Director, earned her Masters in Clinical Psychology, specializing in children, from Antioch University in June of 2002. She treats children with serious psychological problems secondary to histories of abuse, neglect, and /or multiple placements. She has specialized for the past 10 years in the treatment of children who manifest serious deficits in their emotional, cognitive, and behavioral development.
She is a featured expert on KidsintheHouse.com To view all of her videos please CLICK HERE.
Jeanette’s desire to become a child therapist with a special focus on adopted and foster care issues derived from her own experience of being adopted and moving through the foster care system. Her personal experience has informed her education and provided insight into the unique stresses involved with these issues. During her four years as a professional social worker and therapist, Jeanette developed a series of groundbreaking interventions for working with foster and adopted children and currently presents creative workshops for parents as well as therapists and social workers in Los Angeles, at the 2005 Child Welfare League Conference and 2012 DCFS Conference. She is the clinical director of a private practice helping children and families in foster care and adoption at YoffeTherapy.com
Because of Jeanette’s life experience she can more easily connect and relate to the children and teens she works with. She is an exceptional child-care worker who is dedicated to helping each of her clients reach their full potential through mental health therapy and make the difficult journey from despair towards resiliency and hope.
She developed interventions for children and families connected by foster care and adoption in her published book, Groundbreaking Interventions: Working with Traumatized Children, Teens and Families in Foster Care and Adoption.
Adoption Foster Care Parenting Book by Jeanette Yoffe Adoption Trauma Foster Care Psychotherapist Founder of Celia Center in Los Angeles www.YoffeTherapy.com
Jeanette is frequently asked to speak on panels to prospective adoptive parents and social workers to help provide an understanding of the psychological and emotional impacts of multiple transitions for children in out of home care and provide tools for parenting adoptive and foster children.
In 1999, Jeanette wrote and performed a one-woman show titled, “What’s Your Name, Who’s Your Daddy?” about her life story growing up in the New York State foster care system and being adopted at age 7 1/2. This is now on Audible and Amazon in paperback and audio.
In 2006, Jeanette received the Foster Care Hero Advocate award (left) for the Foster Care Awareness Campaign from the County of Los Angeles for her outstanding contributions to the children and families served by the Los Angeles County Foster Care System.
Click on links to view more info:
Jeanette’s YouTube Channel Jeanette-ically Speaking
Press & Media Appearances
Speaking & Conferences
PRESIDENT
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Justin Yoffe, PRESIDENT is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts Dramatic Writing Program and holds a B.F.A and M.F.A. He is a produced Playwright, Director, Artistic Director, Emmy Award-Winning Producer, and screenwriter. He has been the Board President of the Electric Lodge for 10 years, Southern California’s first 100% renewable energy powered theater and the Founder of his own 501c3 Theater Company called Venice Theatre Works. He also currently serves as the Cultural Affairs Supervisor for the City of Santa Monica and in that capacity manages the Miles Memorial Playhouse. a historical landmark theater. He is also the Co-Founder of Arts: Earth Partnership a not for profit program that has been recognized as the “Official Green Certification for Cultural Facilities in Southern California”. They have signed a ground-breaking contract with the City of Los Angeles to assess and certify all city-owned cultural facilities for environmental sustainability and work closely with the City of Santa Monica greening the practices and operations of their cultural institutions, public and private.
VICE PRESIDENT
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Carra Greenberg, J.D., VICE PRESIDENT is an adult adoptee and attorney. She graduated magna cum laude from New York Law School, where she specialized in family and social justice law. Carra has been actively involved in the adoption community and has extensive experience guiding families through the adoption process. Carra is an advocate of adoptee rights and a member of the Family Law Section of the California State Bar.
ART’S FESTIVAL CURATOR
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Nicole “Nic” Rademacher CURATOR FOR CELIA CENTER ARTS FESTIVALS. She identifies as an adopted person, adopted in a closed adoption as a baby yet was placed in foster care as an infant. She has been in a reunion with her biological family since 2004. Nic has been working as a Communications professional for over 10 years in education, art, and mental health. She received her MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She held an artist residency at La Cité Nationale des Arts and recently received an Artistic Community Engagement Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation. Nic has exhibited and screened work worldwide including Transmediale, Harvestworks, LOOP Video Art Festival, 18th Street Arts Center, and at LAX Airport. She uses her artwork to explore non-verbal communication, notions of belonging, intimacy, and identity through video, photography, collage, and community engagement activities. Nic lives and works in Los Angeles with her husband and son.
ADVISORY BOARD
Sharon Kaplan Roszia – Roszia is an internationally known educator, presenter, and author who has devoted fifty years of her professional career to the institution of foster care and adoption. While working in public and private agencies as well as private practice venues, she has focused on crisis pregnancy; infertility; infant adoptions; placement of children from the foster care system, including sibling groups and teenagers, and search and reunion. The additional issues of international adoptions; trans-racial adoptions; gay and lesbian built families and traumatized children with attachment challenges have also become a specialty. In the last twenty-five years, Sharon has also paved the way in the world of open adoptions; believing in preserving connections over time.
Brian Stanton – Adoptee, Award-winning, critically acclaimed performer, and writer of BLANK, which explores adoption and identity. Playing 12 characters, our adopted hero explores every avenue of what it means to be a man ultimately discovering the horrific truth of his birth a quest that also results in an instinctive love for his birth mother, and a grateful dedication to his adoptive family.
Adam Pertman is President, CEO, and Founder of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency, a unique national nonprofit organization that provides research, resources, education, training, consulting and advocacy to improve the lives of children, families and the professionals who serve them. NCAP’s mission is to update child welfare policy and practice in the U.S. so that they progress beyond their traditional “child-placement” model to a new paradigm focused on enabling children and their families to succeed. Pertman brings his experience and expertise from two highly successful careers to NCAP. For the past decade, he established himself as one of the most effective and respected thought leaders in the child welfare world as head of the Donaldson Adoption Institute, a national nonprofit that he built into the pre-eminent research, policy and advocacy think tank in its field. The research Pertman has instigated and participated in – along with his writing, testimony and advocacy – have been utilized to improve practice, shape law and policy, and educate professionals, students, the media and the public. Pertman also served as Associate Editor of the scholarly journal Adoption Quarterly and is a widely published author, including of the new edition of his classic book Adoption Nation, which has been reviewed as “the most important book ever written on the subject.” Previously, he distinguished himself for over 20 years as a senior reporter and editor with the Boston Globe, where he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his writing about adoption.
