Events
2025 Learning Series
Join Us for a Virtual Series: Navigating Parenting in Times of Crisis
February 24–28, 2025
WithinReach is hosting a 5-day winter learning series the final week of February, 2025. Join us for lunchtime virtual webinars to connect with thought leaders, share best practices, and champion a future where every family has the resources and support they need to thrive.
Event Details
- Dates: February 24–28, 2025
- Time: Noon–1 p.m. (Pacific Time)
- Format: Virtual webinars
Registration
- Early Bird: $50 (January 7–31, 2025)
- Regular: $75 (February 1–21, 2025)
Monday, February 24 | Noon – 1:00 p.m.
KEYNOTE with Dr. Ben Danielson
Parenting Through Crisis: Building Resilience, Advocating for Change, Strengthening Communities
Join Dr. Benjamin Danielson—pediatrician, advocate, and professor of practice at the University of Washington—for an inspiring exploration of how we can support families in challenging times. Dr. Danielson draws on decades of experience in community health and equity. In his keynote, he will share insights on systemic advocacy, the power of collective wisdom, and the role of compassionate partnerships in transforming the lives of parents and children alike. With his signature humility and vision, Dr. Danielson invites us to reimagine a future where families thrive, communities collaborate, and meaningful change is co-created.
Session Schedule
Tuesday, February 25 | Noon – 1:00 p.m.
Parenting Across Borders: Supporting Immigrant and Refugee Families in a Changing America
Immigrant and refugee families face significant challenges as they navigate parenting within unfamiliar and often inequitable systems in America. This session will explore the unique experiences of these families, including the complexities of cultural transition, identity shifts, and the impact of systemic barriers like anti-immigration policies. Through the voices and wisdom of hundreds of diverse parents, we’ll unpack themes like acculturative stress, disenfranchised grief, and evolving family roles. Participants will gain deeper insights into how to support families to honor their cultural values, foster resilience, and actively engage in the education and well-being of their children.
Adie Simmons
Washington Family Engagement
Adie Simmons has dedicated her professional work to serving Washington’s children and families. Her expertise in the family engagement field has led her to create effective programs and initiatives that improve the social and educational outcomes of disenfranchised students and empower their families with knowledge. She is the founder and Director of Washington Family Engagement (WAFE) a nonprofit organization focused on giving Washington parents a voice. Prior to starting WAFE, she was the founding Director of the Governor’s Office of the Education Ombuds, a Washington state agency focused on K-12th educational equity.
Meyleen Velasquez
Hummingbird Counseling
Meyleen Velasquez, DSW, LICSW, RPT-S™, PMH-C, IMH-E®, is an immigrant Latinx psychotherapist specializing in perinatal and infant mental health. Meyleen has a doctorate in social work and focused her research on anti-racist and anti-oppressive mental health services. Her practice supports birthing people and clinicians working from an anti-oppressive framework. Meyleen is a Brown woman living with Vitiligo. She is the author of What Therapists Need to Know About Perinatal and Early Relational Health: A Guide to Anti-Oppressive Counseling with Caregivers, Babies, and Young Children.
Wednesday, February 26 | Noon – 1:00 p.m.
Parenting While Engaged with Child Welfare Systems: Challenging and Redefining Systems through Advocacy and Community
Transforming child welfare systems is essential to better support parents and prevent unnecessary family separation. This session will explore innovative approaches that combine legal advocacy and community-based care to help families stay together safely. Participants will learn about the FIRST Clinic’s medical-legal partnership, which addresses the root causes of CPS involvement through collaboration with hospitals, recovery centers, and peer advocates. We will also examine how the Mockingbird Family is reimagining foster care by creating extended-family-style networks that cultivate stability and lasting relationships.
Adam Ballout
F.I.R.S.T. Clinic
Adam Ballout is a graduate of Seattle University School of Law. In 2011 Adam joined with Sarah Crane and Taila AyAy to found ABC Law Group in Everett, Washington. Frustrated with the amount of infants removed from their families at birth, in 2019 alongside Neil Weiss, Adam co-founded the F.I.R.S.T. (Family Intervention Response to Stop Trauma) an innovative multidisciplinary medical-legal partnership aimed at preventing the trauma of family separation. Since 2019, FIRST has kept 83% of the families they’ve served together and gained international status as a model for multidisciplinary collaboration.
Jennifer Justice
F.I.R.S.T. Clinic
Jennifer is currently serving as Co-Chair for the Prevention, Investigation, and Family Services CRP. Jennifer is a parent who was previously involved with the child welfare system. She entered the dependency system in 2015 which ended with the termination of her parental rights. Jennifer maintains a healthy connection with her children because they were placed with loving relatives. Her extensive lived experiences with the child welfare system led to her becoming a passionate advocate in helping divert new mothers from becoming involved in the child welfare system. In August of 2022, Jennifer began her career as a Parent Ally with the F.I.R.S.T Legal Clinic.
Hayley Bridwell
The Mockingbird Society
Hayley Bridwell is a Program Manager at The Mockingbird Society, assisting child welfare agencies in the US, the UK, Netherlands, Australia, Canada, and Japan implement and sustain MOCKINGBIRD FAMILY. Throughout her eight years on the MOCKINGBIRD FAMILY team, Hayley acquired an array of experience and knowledge related to what it takes for agencies and families to be successful in developing community and relationships within the child welfare system. Hayley participates in local committees and boards to develop more equitable practices, searching for better methods of accountability, and creative problem solving to community challenges.
Thursday, February 27 | Noon – 1:00 p.m.
Parenting After the NICU: Prioritizing Perinatal Mental Health and Family Well-Being
The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is an unexpected beginning for 10% of births in the U.S., which often leaves families navigating stress, trauma, and challenges in bonding and attachment. These experiences, combined with service gaps after discharge, can contribute to pediatric feeding disorders and developmental delays in infants, while parents face an increased risk of Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders. Supporting an infant’s development and medical needs requires addressing caregiver mental health—an area where many providers lack adequate training. This session will explore evidence-based strategies, including parallel process, holding space, and intentional communication, to strengthen the parent-child relationship and improve outcomes for families transitioning from hospital to home.
Dr. Leslie Butterfield
Leslie Butterfield, PhD is a perinatal psychologist specializing in perinatal loss, the transition to parenthood, perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, traumatic birth, NICU stays, and parenting medically complex infants. Additionally, she offers consultation and training services to health care and allied birth providers in the childbirth community. Dr. Butterfield has traveled both nationally and internationally in her capacity as a trainer and public speaker, offering services to a variety of medical and mental health organizations.
Sara Circelli
Northwest Center
Sara Circelli is a Family Resources Coordinator and the Hospital-to-Home Systems Change Manager at Northwest Center, a Seattle-based Early Supports agency for children between birth to three years old. The Systems Change team is working to address the barriers, gaps in care, and inequities that exist for infants and their caregivers transitioning from the hospital into community therapy services. Sara has received extensive training in recognizing and supporting Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders. She is also trained as a Group Peer Support (GPS) facilitator and leads a group for Parents of 1 – 4-year-old children for Postpartum Support International.
Tiffany Elliott
Northwest Center
Tiffany Elliott is a Speech Language Pathologist and International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant, specializing in pediatric feeding and swallowing disorders with an emphasis on preterm and medically complex infants and strengthening the caregiver-infant dyad. She currently is on the Hospital-to-Home systems change team at Northwest Center, where she partners with professionals across Washington state to improve the hospital-to-home transition for infants and build capacity of community therapists. Additionally, she works on the infant feeding team at Seattle Children’s Hospital and is a LEND trainee at the University of Washington.
Friday, February 28 | Noon – 1:00 p.m.
Parenting with Joy and HOPE: Building Resilience and Well-Being through Stress Response and Positive Experiences
As parents, there are challenges we can’t always protect our children from, but we can find ways to support them through those experiences with joy and hope. Parenting with resilience begins with understanding how to manage stress responses and nurture positive interactions. This session will explore practical strategies for addressing children’s challenging behaviors while fostering joyful connections that support health and development. Participants will learn how to recognize the early signs of stress, respond with safe and playful emotional expression, and practice real-time self-care techniques. We will also give a brief overview of the Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences (HOPE) framework, examining how Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) can mitigate the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress. By focusing on the four building blocks of HOPE and the joy in parenting, this session will promote a strengths-based mindset and resilience, creating healthier, more connected families and communities.
Betty Peralta
Children in Bloom
Betty Peralta, MIT, MSc, IMH-E (Mentor-Clinical) is a relational health trainer and consultant at Children in Bloom (formerly Alta). She trains people who raise and work with children on the NeuroRelational Framework: an equitable, neurodiversity-informed, and trauma-healing approach to reducing toxic stress in children and families. She is a reflective consultant for early intervention and child welfare agencies, and coaches parents in a domestic violence shelter and in the private sector.
Reverend Amelia Bolyard
Children in Bloom
Reverend Amelia Bolyard is a home-visiting children’s embodiment coach, which is a way of helping children express stress through the body, helping parents support the full range of emotions in their children, and facilitating the increase of joy in their relationships. She does this work through Children in Bloom (Formerly Alta) in a domestic violence shelter, with families reuniting after foster care, and with private clients. Amelia also trains on the NeuroRelational Framework, an equitable, trauma-informed approach to treating toxic stress, which is an underlying factor in many of today’s physical and mental health challenges. She has over 20 years of experience working with children and their families and is the founder of Joy of Dance Experience.
Faith Eakin
Seattle Children’s Hospital
Faith Eakin is a program manager with over 12 years of experience facilitating programs in educational and nonprofit settings. She currently manages Seattle Childrens Hospital’s Community Mental Health Worker program which strives to support families who are navigating the complex youth mental health landscape. Faith is a Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences (HOPE®) certified facilitator committed to promoting community well-being by sharing mindfulness, self-compassion, and social-emotional learning in educational and healthcare settings.
Beth Crispin
Seattle Children’s Hospital
Beth Crispin has over 25 years as a health educator in community and hospital-based education and family support programs. Beth manages programs which aim to increase child and family well-being and resilience by fostering and nurturing parent-child relationships and increasing access to positive childhood experiences (PCE’s). She is a certified facilitator of Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences (HOPE®), committed to demonstrating how HOPE® helps communities and systems of care identify opportunities to ensure that all children have access to positive experiences and their families have support to nurture and celebrate their strengths.