Family Focus Adoption Services

05/06/2025

“Adoption, I pointed out to this young guy, like all parenthood, is about an adult making an unconditional, irrevocable, permanent, and final decision to claim another person as their child. Unconditional means no conditions…..irrevocable means “no backsies”……permanent meant that he would not have been given back to the system….and final meant exactly that: final. Which is why the court adoption hearing is called the finalization of the adoption.”

In this post, Executive Director Jack Brennan speaks with a child about why his adoptive "parents" gave him up. Stories like this are why we came up with the term "counterfeit adoption" to describe families that give up children after they've been finalized - an occurrence that happens all too often. It is also why we created the term "multiply betrayed" to describe these kids.

The intention of adoption is unconditional commitment to bring a child into the family. If the child is given up, how can that adoption be viewed as anything but counterfeit? It is the responsibility of adults to commit to their adoptive child, and yet they gave him up for personal reasons. How could that be viewed as anything but betrayal?

https://jackbrennanperspectives.com/2011/03/11/perspectives/

I met a foster kid recently who is seventeen. I am very grateful to him for giving me permission to write here about our conversation. He’d been adopted out of the foster care system when he …

04/21/2025

Imagine you are a 12-year-old girl in the foster care system. You were removed from your mother when you were five because some caseworkers came to your house and said it wasn’t safe. You haven’t seen your brother since he was adopted by his foster parents a couple of years ago. Since removal, you’ve been moved at least seven times (that you can remember) to different foster homes and residential facilities.

Two days ago, you left an institution where you had built relationships and friendships with peers; where you had developed a sense of normalcy in the sights, smells, and sounds of your daily interactions and routines. A transportation worker loaded you and as many of your things as she could pack into a Ford Focus, and drove for hours to a new place you had never been before. Everything and everybody is different.

Then in the distance, a familiar gait, that saunter you had seen so many times before, brought a sliver of comfort to your otherwise stranded experience. It was her: your Future Worker. Restraining your most aggressive lunge-hug, you exclaim: “You found me!”

Getting to know our kids gives us a small glimpse into their experience of suffering. The survival of the Future Worker-YDM relationship through multiple transitions counters that experience by giving them something they have seldom, if ever, had: a reliable adult with whom they have built a shared history. Someone they can rely on to stick with them no matter what. Someone who will find them.

…

This was an excerpt from a true story in our Fall 2024 Newsletter. All names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved. Head over to our website to read the rest of this story and many others, or to check out our programs that provide much needed support for kids in foster care.

https://www.familyfocusadoption.org/

Adoptions from Foster Care; home studies for Newborn and International adoptions. Hague accredited. NY offices in Queens/Long Island, Albany, Syracuse.

04/10/2025

“I knew this would happen eventually,” Lucas confessed to Adam, his Future Worker. It had been over four years at Barb’s, the latest in a long line of previous foster homes. Barb had appeared to be different, at times implying that their relationship was bigger than foster care, and promising to keep him at least until he graduated from high school. But Barb turned out not to be different, and she didn’t keep him.

After Lucas rode several hours with Adam to meet with FFAS Executive Director Jack Brennan about getting creative with a plan that he - himself - could live with, he said out loud, “Thank God I have Adam.”

Between the time he joined the Relationships Are Decisions (RAD!) Program and hired Adam to be his Future Worker six years earlier, and now being buried by the weight of his current circumstances, Lucas had the powerful shared history and countering experiences that reinforced his belief that no matter what, Adam and Family Focus would be there for him.

Our goal is always to provide confidence-building, safe, and above all, reliable relationships with our kids that exist nowhere else in their worlds. And to accomplish that, we have placed, at the heart of everything we do, an all-encompassing rule and one Lucas clearly understands: We Don’t Walk Away from our kids.

…

This was an excerpt from a true story in our Spring 2025 Newsletter. All names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved. Head over to our website to read the rest of this story and many others, or to check out our programs that provide much needed support for kids in foster care.

https://www.familyfocusadoption.org/

Adoptions from Foster Care; home studies for Newborn and International adoptions. Hague accredited. NY offices in Queens/Long Island, Albany, Syracuse.

04/03/2025

"I realized only years later that those truths were what we later named “irrelevant truths.” The deepest truth was that I had been insulted by her; by the system. I was the good guy here. I was entitled to respect for what I was doing – certainly not this.

But it didn’t matter."

Executive Director Jack Brennan discusses some hard truths he learned on his adoption journey. Sometimes, we pay for our lessons with the mistakes we make. Sometimes, those mistakes have grave consequences. It is only by taking a hard look at ourselves and our own behavior - learning to be bigger than our personal feelings and grievances - that we can act better for the sake of our children. It is the responsibility of adults to change, to be better role models for the kids who rely on us.

https://jackbrennanperspectives.com/2025/03/29/its-you-not-me/

I want to tell you of my own experience with the Child Protective System (CPS). When I took my first kids – 3 brothers, 8, 10. 12 – I had no intention of adoption. Their mother went into rehab an…

02/18/2025

"When you adopt a kid from the foster care system, especially a teen, and more especially one who was living in an institution (the old orphanages), you have to recognize that their experiences have led them to thinking – and not thinking – in a way that is often very surprising. And troubling."

In the most recent blog post from Jack Brennan, he talks about some of the issues that come with raising a foster or adoptive child as well as the power of the "We" formed by healthy relationships.

https://jackbrennanperspectives.com/2025/02/16/if-a-relationship-is-not-a-we-then-what-is-it/

When you adopt a kid from the foster care system, especially a teen, and more especially one who was living in an institution (the old orphanages), you have to recognize that their experiences have…

02/14/2025

"Maybe my words, my stories, my musings will touch someone enough that that someone will decide to give a teen living in foster care with no permanent parent the gift that I was given when I was seventeen: the gift of forever connection to an adult who chose to love me. For free."

Family Focus Executive Director Jack Brennan talks about his experiences and musings from his many years working in the foster care system. Join us on his blog, and here on our page, as we explore the situations that many of our kids have fallen into and the models and frameworks our agency uses to approach the work of supporting these children when no one else can.

https://jackbrennanperspectives.com/2025/02/13/perspectives-part-two-over-a-decade-later-stories-and-musings-of-a-now-old-man/

I’m an old man now, by any measure: I’ll be 75 in September. But I’m still working full-time. I have a twenty year old whose adoption I finalized 15 months ago. And I reopened my foster care licens…

02/09/2025

Anthony Brennan, a Family Focus adoptee, was invited to speak to an audience of adopting families, children, and social service professionals in Uniondale, NY celebrating Nassau County Adoption Day, November 25, 2024. He talks about the importance of adoption and what it means to him. His speech was not recorded at the time, but with his permission, he agreed to share it with us once again. We are so proud of Anthony and his father, Jack Brennan, for all they’ve accomplished!

11/06/2024

Hey everybody! Join us this Sunday at our Castleton-on-Hudson office for a special viewing of Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot, a true story about a rural community that rescued 77 neglected and abused children from the foster care system.

Can't make it this week? Stay tuned for more opportunities to view powerful films and engage in deep discussions with community members and us here at Family Focus!