Title: Healing through Connections: Nurturing the Developing Brain
Date: June 20th, 2025
Time: 10am CST/ 11am EST
Description:
This is a transformative training session designed to deepen participants’ understanding of how challenging life experience shapes the developing brain and influences behavior in children. Participants will explore the science behind early life stressors' impact on brain development and how those effects often manifest emotionally, socially, and behaviorally in infant and early childhood.
Through an engaging blend of research-based insights and real-world application, participants will learn practical, relationship-centered strategies to support healing and resilience in children. Whether you’re a caregiver, educator, mental health professional, or service provider, this training will equip you with tools to foster connection, promote regulation, and create healthy attachment-based environments where children can thrive.
Presenter(s): Loryn E. Smith, MSW
Loryn Smith, M.S.W., is the Owner/CEO of Finally Home, a private social services agency in Hillsborough County, Florida. This role complements the thirty-five plus years’ experience Loryn has had in the child welfare system, working both professionally and personally to impact the lives of children in her area. Loryn has worked as a marriage and family counselor, has been a director for both public and private foster care/adoption agencies, and directed the Training Program for an adoption support center. Loryn has been certified through Rutger’s University and NACAC as an Adoption Competent Trainer, and has been trained as a Trust Based Relational Intervention Practitioner. Loryn brings to her position a personal passion as she and her husband fostered for thirty years, twenty-one of those being in the Suncoast Florida Region. Loryn is the mother of twenty children, twelve of whom were adopted through the foster care system, one who was adopted privately, and two of whom were not formally adopted, but are considered permanent members of the family. Loryn is a frequent trainer in her community, bringing practical application of parenting skills for children impacted by challenging experiences. She also provides Family Coaching Services, working directly with families to assist them in developing effective parenting strategies for challenging situations; expert witness testimony regarding the impact of early suffering and the importance of attachments; and completes Bonding and Assessment Studies