Our Plenary Speaker at this year's National Conference, Jane Asquith, is an Independant Consultant and Trainer specialising in the development and management of Fostering and Adoption Services. She has 25 years' experience as a foster carer in the UK and is a qualified social worker and manager.

Jane has worked in the field for over 35 years. During her years in Family Placement she has developed a specialist placement scheme for teenagers. She went on to serve as a Director and Vice Chair on the Management Board of the National Foster Care Association UK (now known as TFN The Fostering Network UK) for 6 years. During this time she was involved in the NVQ development, the UK Foster Care Standards and the competence assessment framework. She later worked as a consultant and Trainer with BAAF UK for 9 years and was a member of the DFES and looked after Children's Fostering Task Force and Advisory committees during 2004/2005.

Jane has been involved with IFCO since 1997 and has delivered training workshops in many different countries and spoken at many conferences on the developments related to out of home care and child protection policies and practice. During 2006-2007 and 2009 she was involved in two successful EU twinning Light projects in Romania, the first to develop their Domestic Adoption Service and the second to deliver Accredited Foster Care preparation and post approval training programs.

Since her retirement, Jane devotes her time and skills to the development of services for children who need out-of-home care and she works through the Best Care for Children Organisation and Better Care Networks.

Jane Asquith is to be the Plenary Speaker at this year's National Conference. She is an independent International consultant and trainer specialising in fostering and adoption and has worked for BAAF UK

Jane is a social worker and manager with 35 years experience in the field including 25 years as a foster parent and is currently involved in the development of foster care and adoption services, including policy and practice development, training of foster carers and social workers and project development.
She is a member of the IFCO training and development committee.

On the 23rd of January a meeting was held in the Castlecourt Hotel to setup the committee to plan the national conference.

The Committee is: Chair - Eugene Flynn, Vice Chair - Therese McCaffrey, Secretary - Peter McCallig, Asst.Sec - John Horgan, Treasurer - Deirdre Diskin, Asst.Treas - Josie Corr, Workshops - Marie Morris, Childcare Programme - Moira McCallig and Patrick Gilmore

Also at this meeting it was decided to make a contribution to the Gena Heraty Haiti Fund - Gena is an aid worker from Westport.