The Rise of Foster Care

The movement to switch to Foster Family Care began in the middle of the nineteenth century with the out-placing system. The system was started by Catholic Father Charles Loring Brace and the organization that he founded called The Children’s Aid Society, which was located in New York City. Brace believed that the only choices for homeless children in the New York City area in 1853, which were either homelessness, jail, or children’s asylums, were simply not enough. Brace believed that children would be better served by being placed with a family rather than growing up in an institution. He then began to send children out by train to live with various families. This was the birth of the “orphan trains” movement (for more information on orphan trains, see article titled “American Orphans during the Roaring Twenties: The Orphan Trains”). The Society founded by Brace would go on to inspire other societies and similar organizations around the United States. Many of these organizations continue to serve children today. Brace’s own Children’s Aid Society still has its headquarters in New York City and is celebrating over 160 years of service to the children of the United States.

Abolishing Child Labor

Shortly after the turn to the twentieth century in 1900, others also began to challenge the concept of institutions, also known as “children’s asylums” and “orphanages”. In 1902, two women, Lillian D. Wald and Florence Kelly, began to argue for the need for a federal agency to protect the welfare of the children in the United States. Both of the women had concerns which came from the child labor and the child homelessness that they saw every day. As a social reformer, Florence Kelly fought to abolish child labor, and together with Lillian D. Wald, found the National Child Labor Committee in 1904. They were joined in their crusade against institutions in 1907 by the woman’s magazine called the Delineator, which was edited by the novelist Theodore Dreiser, when the magazine issued a call to “rescue” the children currently in orphanages. Then in 1907, Dreiser and others sent a letter to President Theodore Roosevelt asking him to call for a conference on the status of children’s welfare programs in the United States.

Theodore Roosevelt”s Influence

The Conference on the Care of Dependent Children in Washington, D.C., was called for by President Theodore Roosevelt, and was the first of many similar conferences which focused on youth that took place throughout the twentieth century in Washington, D.C. The conference included professionals from various walks of life, mostly with an interest in the welfare of youth in the United States. This included individuals such as Civil Rights leader Dr. Booker T. Washington, whom many remember for his famous speeches and founding of the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama; James E. West, then-Secretary of the National Child-Rescue League and better known for his role as the first Chief Scout Executive of the Boy Scouts of America; and President Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America.

The results of the Washington, D.C. conference included the creation of a Federal Children’s Bureau, which, in keeping with some of the findings of the conference, drafted the basic principles upon which our current Foster Care System was created. For more information on the conclusions of the Washington D.C. conference, see the article “Care of Dependent Children: The 1909 Washington D.C. Conference on the Care of Dependent Children.”