Jeanne Ketola

Jeanne Ketola is the mother of three adopted children from Russia. She and her husband Chuck adopted two boys and a girl after being married for 26 years. The children were 8, 9, and 10 years old when they were brought to the United States. At first the children seemed to adjust well to their new culture and life style. However, their youngest son started to demonstrate behavioral issues. His oppositional behavior continued to escalate and when he was 13, was formally diagnosed with FASD, PTSD and ODD. For four years Jeanne and her husband diligently searched for ways to help their son.

Unfortunately, in 2006, his behaviors lead to legal troubles. Even with this discouragement, these difficulties guided Jeanne in a new direction. Faced with many hurdles to find a therapeutic setting for her son, she became passionately engaged as an advocate for those with FASD. After making hundreds of phone calls and interviewing dozens of professionals, she realized that even though awareness and diagnostic methods existed, very little was available in the area of treatment strategies.

She says, “In the state of Minnesota, much has been done to create awareness in preventing this horrific disability and a strong diagnostic network has been established. However, once the diagnosis is given, parents have very few options. It is a tragedy when you know what is wrong but no one can tell you what to do next. Even more tragic are kids who have this disability and don’t have anyone who can navigate through the system to advocate for them.”

“Through the course of this past year, I have seen the tremendous disconnects between social, education and justice systems. I have experienced a high level of incompetence among professionals who claim to understand FASD, but demonstrate a lack of knowledge in providing appropriate therapies or assistance. Also, I have traveled to several residential treatment facilities and reviewed programs for FASD adequacy in order to determine best practices.”

“My goal is to continue the quest for treatment strategies, influence policy changes at the Federal level, develop a roadmap to guide parents and ensure that treatment facilities that work with individuals with FASD meet certain proficiency requirements. I would also like the opportunity to redefine the many fragmented systems within the social, education and justice systems to better serve the needs of parents and children who have FASD.”

Jeanne takes her work seriously and participated as a parent advocate in the June, 2007 Hill Days in Washington DC. She volunteers as a speaker for the MOFAS (Minnesota Affiliate) Speaker’s Bureau, and as a member of the African American Task Force for MOFAS. She has recently been invited to serve on the Board of Directors for MOFAS.

In addition to her work as a mom, wife and advocate, Jeanne is a business consultant, author, speaker, trainer and system’s auditor in the area of ISO 9001, the International Standard for Quality Management Systems. She and her family reside in Minneapolis, Minnesota.