FFAS Blog

Two of my kids, both now dead, were birth brothers, only 14 months apart. They were literally tortured by their birth grandfather in monstrous ways that would have had that evil man easily arrested were his crimes to my kids revealed. The youngest, Irving, died in a terrible car crash when he was only 21.…

On August 13, 1981, I finalized the adoption of my first legal son, Gilbert. I was 30. Yesterday, I finalized the adoption of my last (?), Thi. Did I have any right to do that at my age? Thi is 19, soon to be 20. I am 75, soon to be 76. How many more…

Father Huntington taught me, almost 60 years ago now, that the intention of all anger was destruction. At 17, that was beyond my understanding, although interestingly not beyond my experience. Anger, like most - if not all - feelings, impels us to do something. I’ve read, and I believe, that anger is an internal coverup…

The reality of our current culture is that families are not coming in to adopt – or even foster – older teens. Not that we always had a large contingent of such families, but it is much worse than ever. The shortage is across the country apparently, and it is since COVID. My administrative staff…

I adopted my first kids nearly 48 years ago, although their finalizations took a while. Since then, I have adopted many more. All of this came together again yesterday, on Father’s Day, when I heard from most of them, and many of my grandchildren. This past month, despite my age, I did it again. Kind…

The push in recent years has been to avoid placing kids into foster care. The idea has been to keep the kids home and provide whatever services they or their families might need in order to make it work. It’s certainly working statistics-wise: the number of kids in care is getting smaller and smaller by…

This is a new blog. It is connected to my old blog (Jack Brennan Perspectives), but whereas the old one was my personal perspective, this one is from the agency perspective. The two are closely related but the purpose is different – after all, I have been with Family Focus since before their first day,…