Meet the Trainers

Who are the Ontario ACT & Pathways 2 trainers?

We have 30 trainers who have over 700 years of combined experience in the child welfare and mental health fields. They also represent the different regions of Ontario. All of our trainers demonstrated that they are highly qualified professionals many having both child welfare and mental health experience as well as experience training professionals and/or families. They also exemplified the following attributes we hoped to attract in our team of trainers:

a rich understanding of and experience with the issues involved for adoptive and kinship families
a heart for our kids and families and a real commitment to improving the status quo
a commitment to ensuring lasting permanency for our kids
a commitment to work within their communities to bring these trainings to professionals and caregivers and to help the ACO further broaden support to families through the establishment of, for example, support groups, peer mentor programs, buddies, youth networks, and respite programs
an interest in working and growing as a team together with the other trainers and the ACO

Among the group there are mental health professionals, child welfare professionals, adoptees and adoptive parents. Their individual years of experience range from 15 to over 40 years.

Our trainers have all completed the ACT training and comprise the first group of permanency and adoption competent professionals in Ontario.

Professionals

Dannielle Samuel

Teresa Jarosz

Sylvia Gibbons

Melissa Pye

Laura Banks

Specialties

substance abuse
self-harm
openness
preparation for adoption/permanency
parenting support/education
parenting youth who are adopted
parenting children/youth with additional needs
parenting children/youth with FASD
parenting children/youth with mental health needs i.e. ADHD, anxiety, depression
Parenting a child/youth who identifies as LGBTQ2S+
transition planning
post-adoption/placement counselling
adoption disruption/dissolution counselling
Self-care
coaching, mentoring training child welfare professionals
coaching, mentoring, training about permanency and adoption
play therapy

Jackie Robertson

Jacquie Tjandra

Dr. Charlie Menendez

Elaine Quinn

Elaine Ash

I am an Adoption Competent, trauma-responsive Social Worker with over 40 years of experience. For the majority of my career I have worked in Out-Patient Child and Family service agencies, with 17 years spent in the Out-Patient Child and Family Clinic at Trillium Health Partners, Credit Valley Hospital site, Mississauga, Ontario. I have had the opportunity to develop expertise in working with children/youth coping with self-harming behaviour, gender identity, self-regulation issues as well as diagnosis such as Anxiety, OCD, Autism, FASD and Eating Disorders (to name a few). I work from a Solution-focused perspective with training in Cognitive Behavioural therapy and an understanding of the impact developmental trauma can have on all members of the adoption constellation. I have been working in private practice in Mississauga for over 15 years and in my Toronto office for over 10 years, offering individual, family, parenting and couples counselling. In my role as a Pathways to Permanency 2 trainer I have facilitated groups for parents since the beginning of this ACO program. Through my role as trainer for the ACO, I have also provided Adoption Competency Training to Child Welfare and Children’s Mental Health professionals. With a passion for the role of attachment in the success of post-adoption integration I have taken additional training in Attachment enhancing interventions such as Watch, Wait and Wonder. For the past 5 years I have been employed 3 days a week as the in-house therapist for a not-for-profit foster care company, Key Assets, providing therapeutic support and training to foster carers and the staff of the organization. In this capacity I have additional training in the “PersonBrain” model that is a NeuroRelational model of therapy that focuses on the relationship of brain science with behaviour.
In addition to my theoretical training I have the lived experience of being a single parent of 2 Trans-racially adopted daughters. One of my daughters was adopted Internationally and the other was adopted through the public system when she was 12 years old. They have been my greatest teachers when it comes to the joys and challenges of raising children who come into our lives with a history of loss and trauma.
In the work I do with adult, I work with people struggling with Anxiety, Depression and Life Cycle Issues, such as the transition to parenting, new employment or a move to retirement.