Southfield, Mich. – Psychology faculty and advanced clinical psychology students at Lawrence Technological University are teaming up with Hope United Methodist Church of Southfield to offer a training program for improving parent-child relationships.

Funded by a grant from the Southfield Community Foundation, the six-session STEP-based parent training program, “Building Your Own PC: A Program to Develop Parent-Child Relationships,” will begin Jan. 16, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Hope United Methodist Church, 26275 Northwestern Highway, Southfield. The free program is open to the public.

The program will be led by Lawrence Tech Psychology Program Director Matthew Cole, school psychologist Pamela Bard of the Southfield Public Schools and Rev. Leon Jefferson of Hope United Methodist Church. Advanced clinical psychology students will help lead the sessions.

The complete STEP program will be offered, including communication skills, effective consequences, drug awareness and understanding feelings through role playing and teaching exercises. Each parent will receive a program book for Systematic Training for Effective Parenting (STEP).

The program is needed now because of a variety of issues including single parents, school drop outs in early childhood, violence in the home, and problems communicating, according to Cole.

“Parents and their children are facing a vast array of stresses that compete with healthy communication and mutual respect, and the STEP program will help parents acquire strategies and tools to improve communication and foster mutual respect,” Cole said.

Jefferson said the need for parent training was identified by a church membership survey and corroborated at a series of town hall meetings conducted by the Southfield Community Foundation. Under the leadership of Rev. Carlyle Stewart III, the senior pastor, the church offered a program on a smaller scale to its membership in 2006.

Jefferson said taking the class should not be viewed as an indication that something is wrong, but rather as an opportunity to improve what may well be a good parent-child relationship.

“We as a society take classes to stay current in our professions and exercise to strengthen our bodies and minds,” Jefferson said. “We should also take part in learning experiences that will build our most important relationships.”

More information on the STEP program is available at www.steppublishers.com/history.

For additional information, contact Jefferson at (248) 356-1020 or Cole at (248) 204-3541.

Lawrence Technological University, www.ltu.edu, offers more than 60 Undergraduate, Master’s and Doctoral degree programs in Colleges of Architecture and Design, Arts and Sciences, Engineering and Management. Founded in 1932, the 4,500-student, private university pioneered evening classes 75 years ago, and today has a growing number of weekend and online programs. Lawrence Tech’s 102-acre campus is in Southfield, with education centers in Livonia, Clinton Township, Traverse City and Petoskey. Lawrence Tech also offers programs with partner universities in Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia.