Couple Caring for 5 Children With AIDS : Foster parents: A Woodland Hills couple makes a home for ailing youngsters and shares their love with six other adopted children.

The bureaucratic designation for the five small children Christine and Roosevelt Coleman have taken into their home is “medically fragile.”

That means the children, all under 3 years old, probably won’t live more than five more years because they all have AIDS or AIDS-related illnesses.

Perhaps the best luck the children have had in their short lives is that there are foster parents such as the Colemans.

The Woodland Hills couple care for more children with acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS, than any other foster parents in Los Angeles County, according to officials of the county Department of Children’s Services. And they have six other adopted children from troubled backgrounds, for a total of 11.

Christine Coleman carries gloves, a mask and goggles in a diaper bag on her frequent trips to the hospital, in case she must be present during procedures that might splash her with blood. She uses medical terms with an ease gained from intensive independent study of the disease as she recounts how she watched 5-month-old twins die in January.

“The wasting stage of the illness attacks the body systemically,” she said Thursday. Her husband and their six healthy adopted children joined her during an interview in a cramped radio station studio in Sepulveda, part of a campaign to encourage foster care and adoption of AIDS-afflicted babies.

“No part of the body is spared . . . They died five days apart to the minute.”

But, Coleman said: “The most difficult time in dealing with it is when they are healthy. In their own little minds they might have plans for the future. When they talk about ‘When I grow up,’ that’s when it’s the saddest. That’s when I have to get up and go out of the room.”

When the Colemans first decided to adopt children after learning Christine could not give birth, they chose to take in those from troubled backgrounds, including children of drug addicts. Growing news about AIDS-infected babies born to intravenous drug users caused them to consider the possibility that one of the children they had adopted might be at risk. In looking for information, they learned of the pressing need for adults who would care for AIDS-infected babies.

County child welfare officials estimate that they encounter 20 such babies a month. The incidence of AIDS among pregnant women in Los Angeles County is estimated at 1 in 1,000 by groups and officials trying to deal with the problem.

Christine, who grew up in a family torn by drug addiction, studied the risk of transmission and decided that caring for AIDS-infected babies was something that she wanted to do.

Roosevelt Coleman, who runs a toxic chemical disposal company from the family home, said it took some persuading.

“The main concern was about the possibility of them biting and stuff,” he said.

But the family and two live-in housekeepers have undergone training that has prepared them to handle the babies and increased their sophistication.

Asked if he was concerned about infection, 13-year-old Teddy said, “It doesn’t concern me. When there’s blood, the kids don’t touch it because they’ve been trained not to touch it.”

Only one neighbor family grew suddenly reticent about letting their children play with the Coleman children, she said. Otherwise, she said, the family has encountered no local hostility, such as that confronted by Ryan White, who died Sunday of AIDS at age 18 after becoming nationally known for fighting prejudice in his Indiana school. Instead, they have gotten much support and encouragement at school and activities such as Little League baseball, she said.

“I think there is more awareness,” Christine Coleman said. “You might get problems in more backward areas or parts of the country.”

Coleman is active in encouraging and training foster parents interested in caring for babies with AIDS. She promotes the cause at events such as an upcoming benefit for a group called Caring For Babies with AIDS, which wants to establish a group home for afflicted babies in Los Angeles.