The waiting room is for the nonprofit adoption and foster agency called Future Families, which has helped place almost 400 children and teenagers into foster care and adoptive homes around the Bay Area. Started in 1984, Future Families places children that have sometimes been in more than 12 foster homes and are in desperate need of a stable home environment. They have had great success in achieving this by carefully training foster parents on what to expect when bringing in a foster child. They also work hard at placing children into homes well-suited for them.

This agency has had an impact on a Los Gatos family, where a child from Future Families has been matched with loving foster parents. (To protect their son's privacy, this family has asked that their names not be used.) The foster arrangement began with the young boy, after a few meetings with the child. After convincing him for two weeks to come live with them, the boy decided to live with this particular foster family after meeting several other candidates at a local children's shelter that was his temporary home. He was placed in the Los Gatos home just before starting his first year in kindergarten.

The foster parents were convinced that the boy wanted to live with them only because he had fallen in love with their dog, a golden retriever that he bonded with immediately.

It was not until two years later that they found the true reason that the boy picked this particular family. One day he told his foster mother, "I picked you to live with because I thought that the dog would protect me if you tried to hurt me." Suffering from the hand of past abuse, this child thought that a dog would be his only protection from a cruel world that was intent on hurting him.

After going through a "honeymoon" period where the foster family and their new son learned about each other, the new family then went through an adjustment period. "We were getting used to being parents, and he was beginning to warm up to us and trust us. Because he trusted us, he also began to show a lot of his anger, which was a good thing," says his foster mother.

Her foster son still sees his biological family on the weekends, along with his siblings, who still live with his natural mother. The foster mother realizes that some foster parents wouldn't be comfortable with this, but they are, because they know just how much their foster son loves his natural family.

"He has two moms," says the foster mom, "and I know that. I will never replace his real mom, but I will be there to help bandage every scrape and love him."

Over the course of time, the family has adjusted well and has blossomed together. "Every day is a memorable moment now. We never celebrated holidays like we do today. Every day has turned into a celebration," says the foster mother, who explains that both she and her husband are committed to this young boy for the rest of their lives.

This foster mom highly recommends Future Families, explaining how supportive they were throughout the process. "They helped us do all the paperwork and were advocates for us with the county. They also helped us with tutoring for our son with his schoolwork," says the foster mom. She also explains how easy it is to become foster parents. "We did home study and were looked at thoroughly by the agency, including being fingerprinted. Our case went smoothly, and the agency worked hard to find a good match-up."

Being foster parents has affected them deeply. "Getting a child is the best gift," says the Los Gatos foster mom, "and I am stronger for it. I am just so happy to have this child in my life."

Future Families differs from most foster agencies because it not only works on foster care placement, it also handles adoptions and offers extensive training and support to foster parents. Paula Gann, executive director of Future Families, stresses this asset of the agency, saying, "All of our families have therapy available to them, and 24-hour staff. We don't just give them a child and then walk away and say, 'Have fun.' "

Gann says they offer intensive training and ongoing support, explaining that "it is just as important to us to support the family as it is to support the kids."

Gann says this support comes from many people who are involved in the agency, including social workers and other staff that deal directly with the children. She explains, however, that the agency wouldn't be effective without the committed Future Families board members, who "allow all of us to do our jobs to help these kids." Gann says that people choose to serve on the board because they feel strongly about the work the agency is doing with the children.

"I share a lot of stories about these kids with them so they know what wonderful work they are doing," says Gann.

Photograph by George Sakkestad A Los Gatos foster child walks his dog.

With experience in nonprofit management, Goldstein works with the agency's fundraising plans, identifying ways to raise more money.

"The board members play a big part, although sometimes we don't always get to see the 'Kodak moments.' Sometimes raising money for the agency or contributing skills to help the agency is the reward," says Goldstein.

Future Families has most impressed Goldstein by not only the therapeutic services they offer the family but also by "continued attention to the welfare of the child and the family." Goldstein adds, "Another thing I appreciated was their willingness to work with nontraditional families."

Paula Gann echoes this sentiment, saying that they do not discriminate against anyone, emphasizing that "single moms have been some of our best parents. We are looking for good parents—that's the bottom line."

Los Gatos resident Debbi Behrman hoped to be part of finding these parents when she volunteered her time to be a member of the board of Future Families. Currently Behrman is on both the marketing and executive committees. She helps with personnel decisions and also helps to raise awareness of the agency among prospective parents and donors.

Behrman worries about the future of foster care programs, especially with the current budget crisis in California and more than 90,000 kids in foster care in this state alone. "The expectation is that funding will be impacted, and at the same time that more kids, with families on the edge, could end up in foster care," says Behrman.

Wanting to make a difference in the lives of these children and to give something back to society were her reasons for taking the volunteer board position. "Our pay," says Behrman, "is the joy of seeing those families come together."

Behrman explains that they have particular goals for children who come to the agency—either to be returned to their biological parents in a healthy home environment, to be placed in a trained foster care home, or to be adopted by a family if birth parents give up their parental rights.

She stresses the fact that many of these children have been traumatized—not just once, but twice. As victims of abuse or neglect, the children go through tremendous trauma in their lives and then experience it again when they are pulled out of their homes and placed in foster care.

A 3-year-old child who came to the agency shows the depth of this trauma. After living in a crack house with her mother, who was involved in prostitution, the little girl was removed from her dire situation and placed in a foster home where she was cared for and loved. At her first Christmas in her new home, she stared at the first Christmas tree she had ever had with tears streaming down her face. When her adoptive mother asked her why she was crying, the child responded, "I miss my mother." Gann explains that this child eventually bonded with her new family but still never forgot her mother.

"Even though what has happened to them is not good, it is still their family, and they are traumatized when they are taken away from them," says Gann.

The agency is accustomed to dealing with abused, neglected and sometimes abandoned children. Some of the children experience anger and have issues with trusting people. They can also be withdrawn, according to Gann.

"It's not like these kids have done anything to deserve this. We are trying to turn them into healthy adults one day," says Gann.

According to statistics quoted by the agency, every 30 seconds three children are sexually or physically abused and robbed of their dignity and innocence. Gann sees a partial cure for the rising number of children in foster care and group homes: "If everyone would think about just taking one child, we wouldn't have a problem anymore."