We are pleased to announce that Susan B. Edelstein will serve as our keynote speaker at the Oct. 17 social worker forum, “Reforming Child Welfare…From the Ground Up.”
Susan Edelstein, MSW, is a licensed clinical social worker and an adjunct assistant professor in the UCLA Department of Pediatrics. She began her career in child protective services and adoption in Los Angeles County. In 1979 Ms. Edelstein began her work at UCLA Medical Center directing service, training, and research projects involving interdisciplinary collaboration in the areas of child abuse and neglect, parental chemical dependency and prenatal substance exposure, foster care and adoption, and comprehensive early intervention approaches. She has published extensively in these areas.
Ms. Edelstein is the founder of UCLA TIES for adoption, and has served as its director since its development fourteen years ago. TIES for Adoption received the 2001 National Adoption Excellence Award in the category of ‘Support for Adoptive Families.’ In 2003, the program received the Comprehensive Community Care Award from the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health in recognition of an outstanding team approach that integrates the client with family members, partner agencies, community services and resources. In April of 2000, Ms. Edelstein received the Daniel E. Koshland Award for California’s Outstanding Practitioner in Social Services by the National Association of Social Workers, California Chapter.
For the past three years Ms. Edelstein has been a mentor for a 16 year old in foster care. She is also the volunteer consultant for the LA chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse
Find her full biography here.
Read her Sept. 21 opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, “What ails L.A County foster care — and what doesn’t,” here.