Oak Hill, WV

United States

25901

Blog on the impact of foster parents, reactive attachment disorder and foster parent training. I also am an educator and work with Communities in Schools. I did foster care for over 10 years and adopted from the foster care system. I have a foster parent coaching ministry. www.kristenadkins.com

Communities in Schools CIS WV is where I'm employed through Fayette County. www.impressingminds.com is my passion project, where I want to change the views around foster parenting and preparation. I have a book that is being edited on foster parenting. I volunteer at SafeHaven Campaign. This is a program that is three pronged: 1. Foster Family Support 2. Helping pregnant substance use-disordered women. 3. Assisting with new life skills for recovering substance use disorder women. I blog on foster care and reactive attachment disorder. I believe that reactive attachment disorder can stem from first family ACEs as well as repeated placement into and removal from foster care homes. If I can assist in the training of foster parents, then I could potentially reduce the ACEs that a child would experience. Each time a foster child is moved, he or she has a new ACE to add, similar to or more severe than, divorce or parental emotional abuse (not knowing why they are moving/breaking the emotions associated with the current caregiver).

My interest in PACEs revolves around the trauma a child suffers, not only leading up to foster care but also after being placed in foster care due to a lack of proper foster care training on the realities of parenting a child of trauma. I want to provide the additional training that is useful to reduce the placements that a foster child will experience by teaching foster parents the impacts of trauma (ACEs), coping mechanisms for a child's negative behaviors, and fostering support for keeping a foster child in their foster home until reunification or prospective adoption proceedings occur.

West Virginia Coalition and my own initiative with foster parents