The Children We Place

The pre-adoptive placements Family Focus does are from a very small pool of children. These are specifically New York children who are already in foster care and freed to be adopted (all parental rights have been ended), but their own agency hasn’t found a family that will commit to them. They are in institutional settings such as therapeutic group homes or residential facilities where they are receiving intensive support and supervision. They are older than 10, and in fact almost all are young teens. We place them by first contracting with their home agencies to work with these children on adoption readiness, so we have access to only the children in our pre-adoptive programs.

Family Focus offers certification in the New York State-approved national training for foster and adoptive parents, called National Training and Development Curriculum (NTDC). Because we are an adoption agency, we have enhanced this training with some of our adoption-specific philosophies. This certification should be recognized by your own home county Department of Social Services as meeting the training requirement for foster care and pre-adoptive foster care licensing, but please confirm this with them first, as it is a very new training and NY counties are not using it yet. We present the training virtually through live Zoom group meetings. If you are interested in younger children who are in regular foster homes, or in fostering children without adopting, you should be speaking with your county's DSS Foster Care Unit.

Families who are genuinely interested in the “Priority 1 children" we place must first complete NTDC, and then complete Family Focus’s additional certification in our specialized adoption training, Beyond The Culture (BTC), by invitation at the conclusion of NTDC training. See the Training Schedule page for details about the process.

Family Focus Adoption Transition

The term 'transition' as it is used at Family Focus refers to the time period between when a child first meets a potential adoptive family, and the point at which the family decides to adopt the child and the child consents to that adoption. The time varies depending upon each unique situation, but on average it takes from nine months to a year or longer, culminating in an Adoption Covenant Ceremony. Family Focus has developed several transition processes by which older children can be successfully placed into adoptive families. The central premise behind the transition process is that children need protection, support and a sense of control. Some examples of our transitions are In-House Transition and our Adoption Guide program.

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To learn how our Waiting Child Program's Empowered Transition / In-House Transition helps children and parents learn to grow and deepen their relationship, with the help of several workers and an empowering step-by-step process that begins after the child moves in.

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' I Never Dreamed: An Adoption Prospective - Real Stories by Real Parents ,' written by Family Focus staff who are also adoptive parents.