In just six weeks, stakeholders from across North Carolina will get together to learn about system integration work with youth involved with child welfare. This is the third annual Benchmarks' Partnering for Excellence (PFE) Conference and this year, we have decided to really focus on "Creating Nurturing Systems".

While the daily work of PFE can be hard and challenges us to think of new ways to meet the needs of the family, the annual conference offers us a way to celebrate our successes and focus on what we want to accomplish in the future. 

This year's keynote speaker is Dr. Tony Biglan. Dr. Biglan is a Senior Scientist at Oregon Research Institute. His research over the past 30 years has helped to identify effective family, school, and community interventions to prevent the most common and costly problems of childhood and adolescence.  

Dr. Biglan is a former president of the Society for Prevention Research. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Prevention, which released its report in 2009 documenting numerous evidence-based preventive interventions that can prevent multiple problems. His recent review of preventive interventions concluded that diverse psychological, behavioral, and health problems can be prevented through the promotion of nurturing families, schools, and communities.  

Dr. Biglan’s book, The Nurture Effect: How the science of human behavior can improve our lives and our world (New Harbinger Publications) describes the progress that behavioral science has made in the past fifty years in improving human well-being.         

We are being inspired this year by Dr. Biglan's work and will be asking ourselves how to get systems to work with each other, instead of against or in silos, so that children, families, and communities can thrive. 

Want to register? Here is the link: