Meet The Team
of Kindred Hearts Post-Adoption Services
Board Members
Board President & Executive Director
Haley Bagnaschi
Haley Bagnaschi is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist who specializes in adoption issues and trauma and is an adoptive parent herself. She supervises a small team of Associate Marriage & Family Therapists in an effort to expand mental health services to the community. Additionally she serves as a trainer providing trainings to both foster and adoptive parents and mental health professionals on childhood trauma, adoption issues and best mental health care practices.
Board Vice President & Care Coordinator
Traci Baker
As an adoptive parent herself Traci is eager to help families advocate for their needs and the needs of their children. Traci is passionate about providing families with resources and opportunities to build healthy relationships, have fun together and thrive despite their challenges. Traci has worked as a Kinship Liaison at Shasta County Children and Family Services and Shasta College Foster Kinship Care Education. In her free time Traci enjoys thrifting and traveling with her husband Doug, entertaining their nine grown children and spoiling their eleven grandchildren.
Board Vice-President
Sheri Wiggins
Sheri Wiggins and her husband are the adoptive parents of four children. They have experience with children with trauma and attachment issues, and children who are medically fragile and severely, pervasively mentally ill. Her family has utilized many public and private services to meet the needs of her family, including WRAP services through Seneca Family of Agencies. Sheri worked for many years as a Children's Protective Services Senior Social Worker, and has been the Director of the Foster & Kinship Care Education Program at Shasta College since 2009.
Board Treasurer
Joseph Burruss
Joe Burruss has a Bachelors in Accountancy and a Master of Business Administration (MBA). Since 2013 he has owned and operated two businesses, Redding Bookkeepers, and Burruss Family Child Care. Joe is a loving father of three children and a grandfather. He started out in child care by watching his sister’s children. Later, his sister passed from cancer. He and his wife, Nicole, then took permanent co-guardianship of four of her six children. In 2020, Nicole left her corporate job to run the child care business. Now Joe runs his bookkeeping business, acts as the family investor, and helps Nicole with the administrative portion of their child care business.
Board Secretary
Nicholle Patrick
Picture and Bio coming soon...
Community Program
Program Assistant
Holli Mathews
Holli Mathews is an adoptee herself. She was adopted at the near age of 2 years old. Holli has helped adoptive parents by speaking at adoption classes about her story and has a passion for helping other adoptees through their experiences, as she has a well known understanding of the trials and blessings of being an adoptee. Holli and her significant other, Travis, have identical twin boys, Jaxx and Jett, also a beautiful little girl, Haizel.
Program Coordinator
Erin Brown
Erin grew up in an adoptive family and has seen firsthand how wraparound services can benefit families in crisis. Erin is a mom and a seamstress, in her spare time she enjoys adventuring, baking, spinning cotton candy and binge watching tv.
Wrap-around Team
Wrap-around Clinical Supervisor
Lori Steele
Lori Steele, LCSW comes to the team after working for 35 years in the field of children's mental health. Lori has a great deal of experience in working with families and children who have been placed in alternative long term homes. She is an adoptive parent and brings a great deal of clinical expertise to the team.
Family Liaison
Amanda Andres
Amanda is the mom of 3 and the child of adoptive parents. Her years as a big sister and emergency dispatcher taught her to think clearly while identifying problems and finding solutions. She is passionate about empowering people to advocate for themselves. In her spare time you can find Amanda paddling in her kayak, reading a mystery, or daydreaming in her hammock about her next globetrotting adventure.
Family Liaison
Lacey Barkalow
Lacey Barkalow is originally from Colorado and attended Bethel University in St Paul In Minnesota for college. She has a bachelors degree in Communications with an emphasis on Relational. In college, Lacey had internship with a non-profit called Safe Families for Children, which helps kids stay out of foster care and keep them in their homes. After graduating college, she worked at a non-profit called Tasks Unlimited, which gives jobs and homes to people experiencing homelessness and getting out of prison. Lacey has been touched by adoption through relatives adopting. She was close to these relatives and wanted to be a part of adoption because of them. In her free time, she loves spending time outside in the mountains skiing and hiking. If not outside, you will find her reading a good book or trying a new recipe
Family Liaison
Cyndie Milazzo
Cyndie retired 2 years ago after 30 years as a registered veterinary technician. She has been a foster parent for 11 years and has had 42 wonderful children in her home. Cyndie and her husband were always a temporary home for those kiddos who were displaced and waiting to go home or to a permanent placement; which was perfect until a set of 7 year old twin girls came into their home and stole their hearts. The adoption was finalized December 2019. Cyndie and her husband are still active in foster care and are working hard with their 16 year old girls who suffer from anxiety, attachment and trauma disorders.
Family Liaison
Kim Dernbach
Kim is a compassionate and versatile professional with over 15 years of diverse experience working with children and their families. She has a BA in psychology from CSUEB, and is an infant care and developmental specialist with a wide-ranging background in child development and early childhood education, attachment theory, trauma, mental health, addiction and recovery, ABA, and counseling and coaching. She previously owned and operated her own infant daycare where she developed her own curriculum, and additionally provided parent coaching, and customized care. Kim also interned with a nonprofit where she worked on the front lines in person providing health and wellness assessments, case management, and light counseling to the at-risk, and unsheltered local homeless in response to Covid-19. Kim has two biological kids of her own, and is the daughter of an adopted mother. She is passionate about mental health, sunshine and the lake, her cats, connecting to the community, and leading with kindness.
Tutor
Maddy Walker
Maddy earned degrees in History and English Education from BYU—Idaho in 2013. She taught middle school English, history and study skills classes before her 3 children were born. She’s flexed her teaching skills by substituting and tutoring while raising her two daughters and son along with her husband Daniel. When she's not busy parenting or teaching she can be found listening to podcasts, reading, crafting or pulling a sneaky prank!
Behaviorist
Brad Woods
Picture & bio coming soon...
Program Supports & Volunteers
Youth Mentor
Bethany Rau
Bethany was born and raised locally in Redding/Anderson. She has a BA in Liberal Studies (multi-subject teaching) and currently runs the front office at a local High School. Bethany is passionate about working with kids and being a support system for them when they feel alone. The two secretaries she had in high school were two of the most important people in her life at a difficult time and she hopes by working in the same position as them, and through this opportunity with Kindred Hearts, that she'll be able to pass that on to a child who may need someone in their corner.
Youth Mentor
Mike Bettes
With 20 years of experience working with kids of all ages, Mike Bettes has been everything from a hike instructor to a teacher. Mike completed his undergrad in psychology at CSU Northridge, and began a career serving families and children on the Autism Spectrum. In order to support a greater number of families in our community, Mike earned his Master's Degree in Educational Counseling, and now works as an elementary school counselor in Shasta County. More important than all of that, Mike is a husband and a father. Currently, Mike and his family are hosting two exchange students, bringing the total to three teenagers in the house!
Support Group Facilitator
Nancy Beatrici
Nancy and her husband were Shasta County foster parents for 20 years. They have two birth sons an a daughter they adopted through foster care. Most recently, she taught adoption classes for the Foster and Kinship Care Education Program at Shasta College.
Support Group Facilitator
Ashley Barboza
Ashley has been a Foster / Adoptive parent since 2015 and has adopted four children in Shasta County. All four children have various disabilities and trauma due to their history and exposure. Ashley has worked over the last 6 years to advocate for her children and their various specialized needs. She is well versed in obtaining services through programs in the community as well as IEP rights for children and their parents within the school system.
Support Group Facilitator
Brenna O'Callaghan
Brenna has over ten years of experience in the foster care system in several different aspects. First as a foster parent in 2013, social worker and now a clinician. She earned her Bachelor's in Social Work from Chico State University in 2016. She earned her Master’s Degree in Social Work and in December of 2020. Brenna is an adoptive mother to eight children and specializes in special needs. She is passionate about empowering and advocating for the voiceless and is eager to empower foster/adoptive families and assist in their journey.
Support Group Co-Facilitator
Karrie Loader
Karrie Loader earned her BS in Elementary Education. She taught school prior to becoming the mother of five children. She and her husband are currently foster parents and in the process of adopting.
Hotline Volunteer
Patrick Stevens
Patrick and his wife became a foster parent in 2002 and have since adopted two wonderful children. Although no longer fostering, Patrick has many years of experience mentoring foster and adoptive parents through the unique challenges associated with children who’ve had hard starts in life and are affected by histories of trauma and attachment difficulties. He is a trainer for foster and adoptive parents, and has founded several support groups designed to provide community and connection for hardworking parents.
Hotline Volunteer
Cerena Cartee
Cerena and her husband Jon have been foster parents since 2018. They currently have 1 adopted child with complex developmental needs and have fostered 9 other children. Cerena is a home school mom with experience navigating medical needs, brain development, behavior challenges, attachment, the work of advocating for services and the importance of self-care.