About Alaska Attachment & Bonding Associates

Alaska Attachment & Bonding Associates (AABA), is a non-profit organization that;

• Provides training, support and advocacy for adoptive parents and foster families who care for children with emotional disorders, such as Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and professionals who work with this population of children.
• Raises awareness of RAD in Alaska and,
• Educates the community how RAD can be prevented.

WHAT drives AABA?

• AABA is passionate about wounded children,
• AABA has first hand experience with RAD children and knows the special care and treatment needed to help these children learn love and trust,
• Left untreated, children with RAD and other emotional disorders are oftentimes shipped to out-of state Residential Treatment Centers (RTC’s),
• Left untreated, these children are likely to become emotionally disturbed adults, who are unemployable, likely to be involved in drugs, alcohol or other illegal activities,
• RAD children place a huge impact in dollars, stress, crime and livability in the Mat-Su Borough and throughout Alaska.

WHY should you care?

• Because our community has been labeled the “meth capital of Alaska”
• Because a growing number of children with emotional disorders are from “meth lab” homes
• Because this is a preventable disorder!
• Because preventing mental health disorders in “wounded” children will take the community working together!
• Because this is your home!

Here are some shocking facts regarding the mental health of our nation’s children:

• The Sub-Committee on Children and Family, February 5, 2003, says, “the problem of emotional disorders in children is 20% and seems to be growing”
• Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development estimates, 12% of children under 18 have mental disorders
• National Center for Children in Poverty research suggests, 10% of young children show problematic behavior and 16 to 30% pose ongoing problems in the classroom

Directors

• CEO/President - Eleanor F. Oakley

Born in a small fishing village in Kanakanak, Alaska, Eleanor attended the one room school there, being the 10th student for the eight grades. Her family soon moved to Anchorage where she attended elementary school. Her father retired from the military, and the family moved “outside”. They moved first to the Seattle area and then Salinas, California, where Eleanor graduated from high school and attended one year at Hartnell Junior College. Eleanor left the area not long after and traveled and worked in different areas of the United States until she returned to Salinas. There she married a fellow Salinas High School graduate. They both attended Fresno State College where she graduated six months before the birth of her son, Sean. Her husband, Jim Hitchcock, continued in graduate school and he completed his doctorate at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. There their daughter, Traighli, was born.

Jim job took him to Los Angeles, California, where he taught and did research at UCLA. Soon he obtained a research project with the World Health Organization (WHO) working with mosquitoes in the South Pacific, first Fiji and then the Kingdom of Tonga. There Jim, Eleanor, Sean, and Traighli lived for three years until Eleanor and the kids returned to Alaska in 1974. Eleanor’s professional life took many turns until she settled on real estate until her retirement from that profession in 1999. During her real estate career, she served on the Mat-Su Assembly, served as a Real Estate Commissioner, and became a foster parent. Eleanor had moved to Wasilla in 1980 and married again to a builder.

Eleanor’s passion for working with children, and her knowledge of challenges when caring for foster children lead her to form (along with two other parents) a non-profit organization, Alaska Attachment & Bonding Associates (AABA) where she now volunteers her time as the CEO and President. AABA is an advocacy organization where Eleanor works to assist parents and children through the advocacy work.

Contact information:

Phone: (907) 376-0366

Fax: (907) 376-00966

Email: eleanor@akattachment.org

• Jim Wardman - Vice President

• Cathy Matkze - Secretary-Treasurer

• Naomi Tigner - Director

• Kaye Zwiacher - Director

• Melissa Jessup - Director/Vista Volunteer

• Bernadine Janzen – Advisory Board

Affiliations

• The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI)

• Mental Health Association of Alaska

• Mat-Su Agency Partnership (MAP)

• Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health

• Association for Treatment and Training in the Attachment of Children (ATTACh)

• North American Council for Adoptable Children P.A.R.E.N.T.S, Inc.

• Alaska Children's Trust

• Mat-Su Health Foundation