Potter Children’s Home and Family Ministries will hold a free Empowered to Connect Conference that will help equip parents of adopted and foster children, as well as related personnel, with skills to better handle difficult situations in the home.

The conference is a live simulcast that will be aired from Brentwood, Tenn., from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Greenwood Park Church of Christ, 1818 Campbell Lane.

The event features Karyn Purvis, director of Texas Christian University’s Institute of Child Development, and is geared toward those considering adoption or foster care and those who are serving and supporting them including social workers, agency professionals, church staff, ministry leaders, counselors, therapists and others.

Potter’s foster care counselor Lee Fowlkes said he and Tim Doty, a minister of family services for Potter, have studied some materials from Purvis and have tried to implement some of her strategies from her program of dealing with children from a hard place.

“I’ve been to her conference in the past, and we want to take the opportunity to make it available for people in the community,” Fowlkes said. “I think that there are a lot of kids who maybe have had a difficult time, and as parents we want to open our home to those children, but we don’t know the best ways to help them based on the trauma they have experienced.”

Fowlkes said the conference will start with information on why children have difficulty dealing with different types of trauma and then will follow up with research-based ways to overcome those challenges.

He said the basis of Purvis’ program is focused on the relationship between the parent and the child rather then just changing behavior.

The strategies help rebuild the trust the child doesn’t have because of past experiences and help change the behavior through the trusting relationship, Fowlkes said.

Doty said the event is a great way for attendees to gain skills to take back home to their own children.

“We are trying to pursue a way of helping by broadening a knowledge about what she does and how she treats some of these kids that some people give up on,” Doty said. “We just know that the material is going to be good, and we want to get it out to folks so they can see some alternative ways in dealing with some difficult situations.”

— To register for the event, visit potterministries.org/news-events.asp. For more information, contact Lee Fowlkes at 270-843-3038 or lee@potterministries.org.

— Follow faith/general assignments reporter Simone C. Payne on Twitter@_SimonePayne or visit bgdailynews.com.