Family & Children's Aid history

The organization that would eventually become the American Female Guardian Society (AFGS) began in 1834 as a moral reform society.

The New York Juvenile Asylum (NYJA) was founded in 1851 by a group of businessmen.

Introduction: The New York Children’s Aid Society (CAS) was founded in February 1853 by a small group of clergymen and social reformers concerned about the general conditions of homeless, neglected and delinquent children.

In 1854, the CAS pioneered the orphan train system when they sent 46 children to Dowagiac, Michigan to find homes.

The New York Foundling Hospital (NYFH) was founded by three Sisters of Charity in 1869.

In 1875, the NYFH began their own orphan train program, which focused on placing young children in Catholic Homes.

As a member of a state investigating team in 1882, she discovered more than 2,500 Connecticut children living in town poorhouses, surrounded by petty criminals and the mentally ill.

After Brace's death, in 1890, the CAS banned the placement of Catholic children under the age of fourteen via the Emigration Plan.

The Foundling stopped placing children out by train in 1919.

In 1920 the NYJA changed their name to the Children’s Village, which is what they are called today.

A smaller training program at Goodhue Home on Staten Island prepared girls for foster care and adoption placement, beginning around 1921. (Source: The Victor Remer Historical Archives of the Children’s Aid Society, Children’s Aid Society of New York City.)

Florence died July 2, 1924 at Leduc Alberta.

Janet, described in documents as “a backward girl showing all the effect of association with a cruel and immoral father,” was executive secretary of a business firm by 1927.

In 1929, the CAS ended their placing out program.

Many predecessors of today’s Family and Children’s Aid began unifying in 1950.

Masters started at Children’s Aid in December 1966 as a case worker, shortly after graduating with a master’s degree in social work from Fordham University.

In 1974, the AFGS merged with another charity.

The 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) (P.L. 105–89) marked the first time issues related to permanency were explicitly stated in legislation, which was pivotal in changing the landscape of child welfare practice.

Family & Children's Aid would go on to operate five group homes for children in Danbury and Shelton, caring for over 1,100 children from 1999 to the present.

Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-351)

Family & Children's Aid begins its partnership with Project Joy, which eventually becomes the Life is Good Playmakers® in 2010.

Family & Children’s Aid opens the new Behavioral Health Center at 80 West Street in Danbury on October 15th, 2011.

Working with community partners, Family & Children's Aid took the lead to launch the Reed Drop-In Center, providing crisis response for children and families in Newtown from December through May 2013.