To coincide with the Prime Minister’s apology for forced adpotions, on Chat with Chika we will be chatting on this topic and adoptions in general. We will be joined by:

Sheri Shenker – CEO of National Adoption Awareness Week

Launching National Adoption Awareness Week 2012, Founding Patron Deborra lee Furness announced the appointment of a Chief Executive Officer has been appointed to run the organization courtesy of support from the Pratt Foundation.

Ms Sheri Shenker has been appointed to the role, effective immediately, and will begin work on co-ordinating all the activities and drive the message which is core to the organization, that every child deserves a family.

Visit the National Adoption Awareness Week website

John O’Neill – Board Member of National Adoption Awareness Week

John O’Neill is an adoptee who has reunited with his birth mother Anne and also has a wonderful son, Joo Sang, adopted from South Korea.

He runs Komosion, a Digital Marketing Agency, and sits on a number of not-for-profit boards including Surfing NSW and Woollahra Festival.

Dr Jeremy Sammut – research fellow in the Social Foundations Programme

Dr Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow in the Social Foundations Program at The Centre for Independent Studies. He has a BA (Hons) and PhD in Australian political and social history. Jeremy’s research for the CIS has focused in part on the thorny issue of Australia’s child protection crisis, and he has become a prominent advocate for the greater use of adoption to provide safe and stable homes for abused and neglect children. His latest publication is The Fraught Politics of Saying Sorry for Forced Adoption: Implications for Child Protection Policy in Australia, which argued that adoption must be recognised as a legitimate option to address the family problems rife in Australia’s burgeoning underclass of dysfunctional families.