PERMANENCY JULIE SELWYN (UK)
Julie Selwyn is Director of the Hadley Centre for Adoption and Foster Care Studies, at the University of Bristol in England. The centre aims to promote best practice in this field by linking research, practice and training in order to provide children with stable and predictable family experiences. Julie is a qualified social worker with extensive residential childcare experience. Julie was also invited by the Prime Minister to be a member of the assessment panel chosen to assess the impact on Catholic adoption agencies of the Sexual Orientation Regulations. She is also a member of the Anglo/Norwegian policy and research group and vice chair of the British Association of Adoption and Fostering's research group. Julie's study of older children placed for adoption - 'Costs and outcomes of non-infant adoptions' - has been published in London, and she is currently working on a government-funded study titled 'Pathways to permanence for children of black, Asian and mixed ethnicity: dilemmas, decision-making and outcomes'.

OPENNESS DR RUTH G MCROY (USA)
Dr Ruth McRoy has a BA degree in psychology and sociology, a Master's degree in social work from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas (USA) and a PhD in Social Work from the University of Texas (UT) in Austin. Ruth has been involved in adoptions practice and research for many years. In the 1970s she worked as an adoptions and birthparent counsellor and established and served as the first Project Coordinator of Black Adoption Program and Services in Kansas City. She later was a technical assistance specialist for the Region VI Adoption Resource Centre at the UT, where she provided consultation and assistance in adoptions for Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Ruth has been a member of the UT faculty for some 25 years, and is currently is a Research Professor and the Ruby Lee Piester Centennial Professor Emerita at the UT at Austin School of Social Work. Ruth is also a member of the UT Academy of Distinguished Professors, and for 12 years she served as the Director of the Centre for Social Work Research, Director of the Diversity Institute at the UT School of Social Work and also as Associate Dean for Research. Ruth is a Senior Research Fellow with the Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute, and is a Visiting Research Professor at Boston College Graduate School of Social Work.

DR CATHERINE MCMAHON (NSW)
Dr Catherine McMahon is a Senior Lecturer in Developmental Psychology at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on the development of parent-child relationships in the context of reproductive risk factors and on ensuring that empirical findings are translated into appropriate evidence-based support services for families. She is involved with several multi-disciplinary studies implementing and evaluating relationship-based supportive interventions for families at risk.

ADOPTEE JUDY DUREY
Judy Durey is a practising artist, a researcher in the School of Social Science and Humanities at Murdoch University, a lecturer in Visual Research at Curtin University, and a former nurse. She has artwork in various major collections and has presented her research on adoption to a number of interdisciplinary forums. These include the 5th International Performance Studies Conference, University of Wales, (1999), various conferences on adoption, community, life writing, and mental health within Australia and New Zealand, a Contemporary Archaeology forum on Creative Narrative and Cultural Production, Goteborg University, Sweden (2003) and the Australasian Cultural Studies Conference held in Perth (2004). In 2005, her autobiographical, multimedia installation on adoption (re) storying, titled 'Translating Hiraeth', was shown as part of the Perth Festival (PIAF) Translation and Transformation. Judy has served on the board of ARCS WA since 1996.

ADOPTIVE PARENT ROGER WEST
Roger West is the father of two children, now young adults, adopted as infants from Bogota, Colombia in South America. Roger is a partner of WestWood Spice, a national consulting firm who works exclusively for people and organisations whose aim is to make a difference in the lives of people who are disadvantaged. Roger's background is as a human rights lawyer and then as a CEO of several small but significant government and community agencies. He was the first Commissioner for Community Services in NSW and the founding President of the NSW Guardianship Tribunal. Roger has a strong interest in child welfare and child protection, youth, disability, the ageing, guardianship, mental health and legal aid. He has served on the Board of NCOSS, the NSW Consultative Committee on Social Welfare, the NSW Legal Aid Commission, the Commercial Tribunal and the Medical Tribunal.

JAN KASHIN
Jan is an accomplished artist and has taught in Queensland, Sydney and Alberta, Canada. In 1963, Jan’s son was forcibly taken from her using leather restraints and drugs. She has never been able to overcome the psychic shock she experienced. In 1980 she began Adoption Triangle, Queensland, in 1982 she began ARMS Queensland, in 1984 co-founded the Adoption Contact Information Service, in 1997 she was convenor of the organising committee of the 6th Australian Conference on Adoption “Separation, Reunion, Reconciliation” and has tirelessly lobbied for adoption law reform in Queensland. In 2002 she began painting an acrylic series on Adoption Trauma. Her artworks record others’ attempts to disconnect her from her child and the subsequent effect that physical and emotional disconnection had on her, her child, other mothers and other children. Jan sees herself as a war artist. “My art is a metaphor for abandonment, incarceration, battle, defeat; because my art rings true for hundreds of other mothers, it has relevance; because it has been the key to unlock other women’s trapped experiences, it is important. Because it enables others to understand the devastation wrought on hundreds of thousands of young women and their snatched babies, it is vital to this generation”. In her keynote address, Jan will talk about the significance her art has had on giving voice to her experiences.