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Special Olympics Illinois will be hosting their first Families Conference on Saturday October 13, 2012.  This conference will be held at the Doubletree Hotel and Conference Center in Downers Grove, IL.  At the conference, they will be providing a number of different sessions for families/guardians, siblings and teens and young adults with an intellectual disability.

According to the Special Olympics Illinois website, the schedule will begin at 8:30 a.m. with registration and then the welcome and keynote kicks the conference off at 9:00 a.m., with the first session following that at 10:30 a.m.  After an hour for the first session, lunch will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.  There will be three afternoon sessions at 12:45 p.m., 2:00, and 3:15 p.m.

The theme of the 2012 Families Conference will be all about “empowerment for families.”  At this year’s inaugural Families Conference, the  keynote speaker will be Brian R. King, LCSW and his talk will be about “Learning to Work Together So You Don’t Fall Apart.”

Many of the speakers at the conference are professionals from a variety of fields.  They will cover information on a variety of topics that will help to empower Special Olympics families.  The speakers that will talk during the parent/guardian sessions speak about the following topics:  health & nutrition, financial planning, transitioning, government benefits, and employment.  During the Athletes & Siblings sessions, topics that will be covered include technology, personal safety & bullying, nutrition & fitness, boundaries and sexuality, and a variety of activity sessions.  If you’d like to find out more information about this conference, visit the Families Conference page at the Special Olympics Illinois website.

Stay tuned to the Special Chronicles Podcast for some possible interviews and live podcasting coverage from the conference.  If a live podcast is not possible due to time, then there will be a recap on an upcoming episode of the podcast.  To ensure you don’t miss any of the coverage on the podcast, be sure to subscribe to the podcast feed or with iTunes and a new episode will download when it’s available.