 I'm Tom Handel with another CTN member highlight, and today we're here with Liz Stout, the board chair of Kids First. Thanks for joining us, Liz. Thank you for having me. I understand there's a conference coming up for professionals, but before we get into that, could you describe a little bit about what Kids First is all about? Well, Kids First is a great organization. I feel really honored to be part of it. They started about 15, 16 years ago, and they provide services to families, to children, and to professionals who are wrestling with some of the difficulties of divorce and separation. How do you do that? What kind of programs do you have? Well, we have groups for kids where they can go and they do arts and crafts type projects. It's not therapy or anything like that, but it's just sort of a support group for kids to talk about their feelings and get some support around that. We do educational classes for parents, a general class for parents going through divorce, and then if they have continuing difficulties, they're sort of higher level classes. And we provide support for professionals in the community through workshops. We have a bunch of free evening workshops, as well as this fall conference, which is a big event for us. It seems like sort of a little bit of a unique program or organization to address. How did they come about? What were the reasons for that? Well, it's interesting. There were professionals in the community who were really wrestling with some of these conflicts and families and trying to minimize the damage to children as their parents went through divorce and separation. And it really was an alliance between legal professionals on the one hand and mental health professionals on the other. And they realized we really need to work together to try to help folks get through some of these difficulties in a way that's less damaging to kids. I would imagine that sometimes parents, or there might be a difference between the two parents on how receptive they are to receiving services like that or their kids. Have you noticed over time that changing at all? Well, it certainly happens that there may be one who's more receptive than the other. But either parent can make changes that are going to be helpful to kids. It doesn't necessarily require both to be exactly on the same page. We're often not on the same page. Now, this program that you have coming up is actually for professionals. Can you tell me a little bit about it? Yeah, we have our annual fall conference, October 25th. And we've had a lot of different kinds of topics brought in speakers, national speakers to talk to the community. Our conference this fall, I'm very excited about, we have a number of panels. We have guardians I'd like them. We have mediators, mental health professionals, lawyers and judges who are all going to talk about how do they help people get from no way to okay? How can they unlock that conflict and find something that everyone can live with and move on with their lives? And it really takes an approach from various angles to help people achieve that. So we're really looking forward to it. Yeah, it seems like people might not always think about it, but when you get into a situation of divorce where there's children involved, there's so many other factors that come in and so many other people involved. It seems like it's a unique experience to get them all together at the same time. Right, right. Well, we're very lucky to have support from these various areas of our community. And people who work in this field really recognize that we have to work together. People need assistance from those various areas. They need a lawyer. They need a therapist. They need a judge who understands what's going on. Sometimes it seems also that sometimes parents and those professionals, especially on the legal side, get into conflict with one another. How do they address that sort of thing? We're very lucky to have a community where many people are really dedicated to trying to make this work and to help families. Yeah, people can get caught up in difficulties, but oftentimes they're able to take a step back and say, wait a minute, we need to address this in a healthier way. So where's the conference and when is it going to be held? It will be October 25th. It's at the Hereseekit up in Freeport, which they have an amazing facility and an amazing lunch. And it's an excellent networking opportunity as well. So it'll be Friday the 25th. I think we start at 8 and go to 3.30. And where can people go to get more information? The Kids First website, it's kidsfirstcenter.org. They have all the information there. Great. Well, thank you very much for joining us. Great. Thank you, Tom. Bye. Bye.