About Sharon
Sharon Kaplan Roszia is an internationally known educator, presenter, and author who has devoted over fifty years of her professional career to the institution of foster care, adoption, and relative care. While working in public and private agencies as well as private practice venues, she has focused on crisis pregnancy; infertility; infant adoptions; placement of children from the foster care system, including sibling groups and teenagers, and search and reunion. The additional issues of international adoptions; trans-racial adoptions; gay and lesbian built families and traumatized children with attachment challenges have also become a specialty.
In the last twenty five years, Sharon has also paved the way in the world of open adoptions; believing in preserving connections over time. Sharon has lectured extensively both domestically and abroad; written two books and contributed to dozens of others; produced training videos and written curriculum to teach both adoptive parents as well as professionals. She is respected for her conference opening addresses and her several days trainings both with people touched by adoption as well as professionals.
Sharon’s most recent book, The Seven Core Issues Workbook for Parents of Traumatized Children and Teens, was released in August of 2022. Her previous book, Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency came out in 2019. Both books were co-authored with Allison Davis Maxon.
Sharon is also the co-author, along with Lois Melina, of the Open Adoption Experience: A Complete Guide for Adoptive and Birth Families from Making the Decision through the Child’s Growing Years (1993); Cooperative Adoption: The Official Handbook along with Marri Rillera (1985); contributor of Creating Kinship, U. of Southern Maine, Working With Older Adoptees: A Sourcebook of Innovative Models(1994); contributor to Siblings in Adoption and Foster Care; Traumatic Separations and Honored Connections ( 2009). Sharon has also published articles in Adoptive Family Magazine; PACT Press and Adoption Therapist; she has also been featured in newspapers and magazines across the country.
Sharon has been honored by the Congress as an Angel in Adoption; the American Adoption Congress; the North American Council on Adoption; ATTACh (The Association for Treatment and Training in the Attachment of Children); Annette Baran and Rueben Pannor Award for Outstanding Work in Adoption and many other recognitions throughout her career.
Sharon has also parented by birth, adoption and foster care and has watched her family grow to include seven Great Grandchildren. She has watched the powerful forces of genetics play out in her growing family and the impact of the life long implications of adoption on each family member.
Both as a professional and a family member, she was led to develop a perspective on these lifelong implications, along with friend and colleague Deborah Silverstein L.C.S.W., which have framed her life’s work into the Seven Core Issues of Adoption upon which trainings and writings have been based.
Sharon is semi-retired and consulting with Kinship Center; a member of the Seneca Family of Agencies. She is also a contributing writer to “Fostering Families Magazine” and “Adopt Talk.”
Sharon is delighted to join the National Center on Adoption and Permanency (NCAP) as a trainer and consultant.
