April 29, 2005
Media Advisory
To: News Directors and News Editors
From: Veronika Avery, Assistant Director of Media Relations, 342-5444, vavery@ulm.edu

ULM to Co-sponsor Spring Adoption Institute

The University of Louisiana at Monroe's Title IV-E Program through the Social Work Department will help sponsor the Louisiana Adoption Advisory Board, Inc. Spring Adoption Institute entitled Surviving Adolescence: "Help for Adoptive Parents". The event will be May 13-14, at the Louisiana Conference Center located at 2350 Methodist Parkway, Woodworth, LA (6 miles south of Alexandria).

This two -day institute will explore the unique challenges of parenting that may confront adoptive parents of adolescents and to identify strategies and approaches that support adolescent development and strengthen the family through understanding. This institute is for adoptive parents, social services professionals, IV-E students, and ULM professors. Continuing Education Units are pending (12 hours).

Lodging is also at the Louisiana Conference Center at a rate of $72/night for singles, $57/person per night for double, and $52/person per night for triple. Please call 318-449-4500 for reservations. The cost of the institute is $75/person, $100/adoptive couple, and $100/person onsite.

The guest speakers are Deborah Hage, MSW and Holly Van Gulden, MSW. Deborah is a lecturer, author, therapist, adoptive parent to seven children, therapeutic foster mother and specialist in attachment disorder. In her "Parenting with Pizazz" lecture series, Deborah shares how her family has stayed san through the trials and triumphs of parenting their children with emotional scars from abuse and neglect. Holly is co-director of the Adoptive Family Counseling Center in Minneapolis, MN, and co-author of Real Parents, Real Children; Parenting the Adopted Child, a top selling, must-read in adoption circles. Holly draws on her professional and personal experience in her presentations.

For more more information contact Molly Womack at (337)-896-5571 or Linda Woods at (504)-443-1012.

For this and other ULM news online visit www.ulm.edu. While there, check out ULM's on-line calendar for all of ULM's upcoming events.

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