Family and Community Integration of Childrenunder the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with

Disabilities (CRPD):Implications for Group Home and Residential Care of

New Human Rights Standards and Findings from Research

Introducing the speakersMs. Catalina Devandas Aguilar (Costa Rica) is a lawyer by training and a human rights advocate.

She has worked extensively on disability rights and inclusive development for the past 20 years, including with the World Bank, the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs, and international donor organizations that supported the work of organizations of persons with disabilities to promote the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Ms. Devandas Aguilar was previously part of the disability rights movement at national, regional and international level and continues to work closely with organisations of persons with disabilities.

Her work priorities as a Special Rapporteur include socioeconomic inclusion, the promotion of full citizenship of persons with disabilities, and embracing diversity/understanding that persons with disabilities are part of human diversity.

She is married, mother of three daughters, and has spina bifida.

Charles A. Nelson III, PhD, is currently Professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience and Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Education in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also holds the Richard David Scott Chair in Pediatric Developmental Medicine Research at Boston Children’s Hospital. His research interests center on a variety of problems in developmental cognitive neuroscience, including: the development of social perception; developmental trajectories to autism; and the effects of early adversity on brain and behavioral development. He chaired the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Early Experience and Brain Development and served on the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panels that wrote From Neurons to Neighborhoods, and more recently, New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research. Among his many honors he has received the Leon Eisenberg award from Harvard Medical School, an honorary Doctorate from Bucharest University (Romania), was a resident fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center (Italy), has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and received the Ruane Prize for Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Research from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.

Joan Kaufman received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Yale University where she served on faculty from 1998-2015. In 2015 she was recruited to Baltimore to serve as Director of Research at the Center for Child and Family Traumatic Stress at Kennedy Krieger Institute. She also holds an appointment as a Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and in the Division of Mental Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Kaufman’s research is in the area of child abuse and neglect, spans from neurobiology to social policy, and uses tools from psychology, genetics, and neuroscience to

understand mechanisms of risk and resilience in vulnerable children.

Ruthie-Marie Beckwith, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of TASH, Inc. and a national consultant who helps people with disabilities develop and implement strategies for greater autonomy in their daily lives. She was the founder and principal partner of Blue Fire Consulting and provided consulting services across the United States in areas of self-determination, community organizing, leadership development, and self-employment. Committed to grassroots approaches to empowerment and resource mobilization, she has served as the founder and Executive Director of the two statewide non-profit organizations dedicated to helping people with disabilities; The Tennessee Association of Microboards and Cooperatives, Inc. and People First of Tennessee, Inc. She teaches advocacy and disability history at CUNY as Adjunct Faculty and has served as Adjunct Faculty at Vanderbilt University and Middle Tennessee State University. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Special Education from George Peabody College and her B.S. degree from the State University of New York at Geneseo.

Eric Rosenthal, JD, LL.D (hon.), is Founder and Executive Director of Disability Rights International (DRI). Since establishing DRI in 1993, Rosenthal has trained human rights and disability activists and provided assistance to governments and international development organizations worldwide. Rosenthal has conducted investigations and trained activists in more than 25 countries. Rosenthal has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and the US National Council on Disability (NCD).

Ines Bulic Cojocariu is the Deputy Director at the European Network on Independent Living (ENIL). Since 2005, when she was appointed the Coordinator of the European Coalition for Community Living (ECCL), her work has focused on the right to independent living, deinstitutionalisation and the use of Structural Funds at the EU level. She has written or contributed to a number of publications, policy papers and manuals on these topics, and regularly delivers training on how to move away from institutional care and implement Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Ines has an MA in Human Rights from the Central European University in Budapest (2002/2003) and has previously worked at Amnesty International Croatia.

Webinar – April 30, 2019

9-11am EST; 2-4pm BST (3-5pm CET)Register HERE