Pat O’Brien, MS, CSW

Executive Director

You Gotta Believe!

1728 Mermaid Avenue

Brooklyn, N.Y.  11224

1-800-601-1779 (24 hr)  718-372-3003 (off)  718-372-3033 (fax)  ygbpat@msn.com

 

BIOGRAPHY

 

            Pat O’Brien is the Founder & Executive Director of You Gotta Believe! The Older Child Adoption & Permanency Movement, Inc.  You Gotta Believe is one of the few placement agencies in the country that limits its practice to finding permanent parents who will legally or morally adopt teens, pre-teens, or young adults in foster care without regard to whether the youth is freed for adoption or not.  You Gotta Believe has a major contract with the City of New York to find permanent families for teens and young adults in New York City.  The agency also has a five- year federal grant to recruit families for Suffolk County teens from the constructive adults who are very much a part of the teenager’s life cycle. This grant attempts to find homes for youth despite the fact that they continue to have ties with their birth families.  The Project looks to find permanent parents who will understand that youth need to continue to have contact with their birth families.  YGB is also working on another four-year federal grant to help New York City to find permanent homes for 100 teens living in congregate care facilities where YGB has out-stationed its staff at a variety of residential treatment centers and group homes around the New York City area.  YGB was also awarded a generous award from the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption called Wendy's Wonderful Kids a signature program of the Dave Thomas Foundation that allowed YGB to hire two full time staff, one for its Long Island Office and the other for its New York City office, to do specialized intensive child-focused recruitment on 20-25 of the longest waiting children.   

 

            Pat offers keynotes, trainings, workshops, and consulting across the country on three major topics:  1) the connection between foster care & homelessness and how to prevent homelessness by recruiting permanent homes for teens and pre-teens in foster care; 2) how unconditional commitment to all children who come into our care is the essential ingredient in preventing both placement disruption and foster care drift; and 3) how to utilize laughter and humor to reduce the stress, tension and pain of everyday life.

 

           Pat also produces, and often hosts, You Gotta Believe's weekly cable access television show and radio forum.  The two broadcasts are called "The Adopting Teens & 'Tweens Show", a show about all faucets of adopting teens and pre-teens from the foster care system.   The television show airs every Thursday at noon and again at 8pm (EST) and the radio forum airs every Sunday evening from 8-9pm (also EST).  The shows can be watched via live stream on the internet by logging on to our website www.yougottabelieve.org and clicking on to the cable access and/or radio station's website. You Gotta Believe received a national Adoption Excellence award in 2007 from HHS's Children's Bureau in the area of Media/Public Awareness of Adoption from Foster Care for its work producing its own radio and television program.   

 

    Pat has his Master of Science degree in Social Work from Columbia University School of Social Work. Pat was recently honored as an "Angel in Adoption" by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute in October, 2007 for his 20 years of work in the field of older child adoption.  

 

                Some of Pat’s papers and publications that are available upon request include:

 

1)                   “Youth Homelessness and the Lack of Permanent Relational Planning for Teens in Foster Care: Preventing Homelessness Through Relationship.”

2)                   “The Story of the Independent Liver.”  A satirical fictional tale about the dangers of the permanency planning goal “independent living.”

3)                   “Unconditional Commitment: The Only Love that Matters for Teens.” Fostering Families Today  Premier Issue, April 2001.

4)                   “Laughter, Bonding, and Adopting Older Kids  Fostering Families Today  March/April 2007.

5)                   “A Vote for Orphanages --- Until.”  Fostering Families Today  Fall 2002

6)                   “Taking the P.A.R.E.N.T. out of PERMANENT leaves you with M(ostly) N(ot) E(nough)."

 

Would you like to hear Pat O'Brien?  Click below to order CD's or a tape!

http://www.adoptioncds.com/product_info.php?products_id=131

 

 

  UPCOMING SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

FOR PAT O'BRIEN