Since its inception as an accredited non-profit agency in 1987, Family Focus has added its own unique voice to the adoption community with its pioneering philosophies, training and adoption practices. Family Focus Board and Staff, many of whom are adoptive parents, share a belief that adoption transforms the lives of children and the families that adopt them.

Our Administrative Office is in Castleton, NY near Albany. We license families from the Capital District through Metropolitan New York City and Long Island to be able to adopt from the foster care system, and we place children from all over the United States. Our agency is also approved in New Jersey and Connecticut.

For locations and directions, see our " Contact Us " page

The History of Family Focus Adoption Services
by Maris (and Stu) Blechner

Family Focus began to take root many years before it was incorporated. I had been a high school English teacher until 1968, when I decided to stay home as a full-time mom once our family was created, by birth and adoption. Stu was a dentist, and together we were already on the forefront of providing advocacy work for adoption in New York State through the NYS Adoptive Parents Committee. I had been involved in citizen advocacy, particularly helping foster parents who wanted to adopt their foster kids and were struggling to navigate the system. In 1980, a New York City foster care agency asked me to help manage a special needs adoption program. I learned about counseling pregnant women and placing infants, as well as helping downstate families navigate New York State’s infamous Blue Books (which later became the NYS Child Photolisting) to locate older children to adopt. What fascinated me the most was that these were “regular” folks, “meat and potatoes people,” who adopted very difficult youngsters and held on to them through very difficult situations.

During that time, I also learned about the importance of adoption subsidy, parenting training, writing home studies, and how to deal with the complex strata of city and state government involved in child welfare. Placing children for adoption intrigued me enough that I never went back to teaching. Instead, I earned a Master of Social Work degree at Hunter College while working for that NYC foster care agency. My major academic focus was administration, and the bulk of my study centered on how to start an adoption agency. I knew, as did many others, that there was a strong need in downstate New York for a non-traditional, multi-service adoption agency.

In 1985 an adoption attorney, Aaron Britvan, who was also an adoptive parent, encouraged me to network with similar-minded people to open an agency. His support went beyond that, as he also found someone to donate some money to get us started. Coincidentally, New York State was looking to help “community based” child welfare agencies start; Family Focus became part of that group of new agencies (most of which did not survive long term).

It was an incredibly exciting time. We gathered as a group of adoptive parents, foster parents, and adoptees – a mixed bag of personalities who were all driven to get our agency off the ground and running. We researched the agency regulations required by New York State, and it took us two years to develop the entire agency structure and design. We got our official approval and certification on July 3, 1987, and opened an office in the basement of our house in Queens, NY.

It was our thought that the geographic circle around Eastern Queens - including Queens and Brooklyn, as well as Nassau County – had enough families to adopt all of the kids in the Blue Books. We just had to reach people on a different level. To do so, we facilitated orientation meetings in libraries on Long Island and Queens, grabbed as much free publicity as we could, and worked for New York City’s own child welfare agency to help foster parents adopt their foster children. We soon did orientation meetings in the Hudson Valley (even at a hospital) and went to every kind of regional state meeting that we heard of. Those were the years of adoption fairs in New York City, and we always had a big attractive table, usually with balloons, to draw people.

From our early days, we did workshops at local, regional, and national conferences. We always had giveaways including pens, rulers, church fans, coffee mugs, and more. We developed a baby program for healthy babies and those with special needs, aimed at supporting birth parents considering adoption. We also developed a high quality international program. We always had interns, some from high school and others placed from social work schools.

On our first day in the office, we got a phone call asking if someone could visit a local family who needed a home visit report right away. We sent someone out that afternoon! By November, we found a “real” office, staying in Eastern Queens, and from that point on we were rolling.

Kathe Stojowski and Loretta Ogden were the Deputy Directors, and they had the energy and organizational skills to figure out everything from taking phone messages, to filing, to supervising workers. We had staff meetings every month and frequent Founding Board meetings. We fed all of the staff at our meetings - some of us still say, “No eating, no meeting!” - and also had summer family picnics every year.

Jack Brennan was our first staff member hired. He brought us the older child adoption reality, experience, and knowledge that we needed. He heard right away that although we were a community-based agency to start, we wanted to progress toward becoming a state-wide agency, and later a national agency. Stu spent several years on the Board of a statewide foster and adoption advocacy agency, which gave him the ability to keep his finger on the pulse of statewide initiatives and programs, and to bring knowledge and expertise to Family Focus as an Advisory Board member.

We grew to who we are in steps – and clearly we are still growing. The first teenagers that we placed are now probably grandparents. Not counting the many, many international placements, we have had about one thousand local and domestic placements.

We are indeed “the little agency that could.” We have taught many people throughout our country and Canada about transition, lifetime commitment, inducement, counterfeit and real adoption, Adoption Covenants, and how to talk honestly with kids about adoption. From our perspective, our future should be spectacular.

(Maris Blechner, the agency's founding Executive Director, tried to retire, but nobody completely leaves Family Focus! She now serves as Executive Director Emerita, doing important casework and serving as our unofficial historian, the "memory" of  the agency.)