FOSTER CARE HEADQUARTERS

1997

Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) Enacted

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was enacted in 1997 in response to concerns that many children were remaining in foster care for long periods or experiencing multiple placements. This landmark legislation requires timely permanency planning for children and emphasizes that the child's safety is the paramount concern.

1990

Concurrent Planning Began

In the early 1990s, Children's Aid pioneered Concurrent Planning, a foster care approach that became the basis for the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, and which greatly changed foster care. Through Concurrent Planning, child welfare agencies work simultaneously with birth parents and foster parents to achieve permanency for children as quickly as possible.

1900

State Foster Care Agencies Were Created

During the early 1900's, social agencies began to supervise foster parents. Records were kept, children's individual needs were considered when placements were made, and the federal government began supporting state inspections of family foster homes. Services were provided to natural families to enable the child to return home and foster parents were now seen as part of a professional team working to find permanency for dependent children.

1893

South Dakota Starts Providing Subsidies

South Dakota began providing subsidies to the Children's Home Society after it was organized for its public child care work.

1885

Pennsylvania Becomes First State To Require Foster Carers To Be Licensed

Pennsylvania passed the first licensing law, which made it a misdemeanor to care for two or more unrelated children without a license.

1865

Massachussetts Becomes First State To Pay Foster Carers

Massachusetts began paying board to families who took care of children too young to be indentured.

1854

Orphan Trains Carried Children Across the US and Canada

From 1854 to 1929 an estimated 250,000 orphaned, abandoned, and homeless children were placed throughout the United States and Canada during the Orphan Train Movement.

1853

Charles Loring Brace Makes Foster Care Free

A minister and director of the New York Children's Aid Society, Brace was concerned about the large number of immigrant children sleeping in the streets of New York. Charles Loring Brace, the founder of The Children's Aid Society, believed that there was a way to change the futures of these children. By removing youngsters from city streets and placing them in farm families, he thought they would have a chance of escaping a lifetime of suffering. He proposed that these children be sent by train to live and work on farms in the midwest and west. The resulting Orphan Train Movement lasted from 1853 to the early 1900s, and transported more than 120,000 children to new lives.

1807

First Child Abuse Case Proscecuted Through the ASPCA

Foster homes in New York City in the 1800s were often abusive. In 1807, an 8-year-old orphan named Mary Ellen Wilson received daily whippings and beatings at her foster home. There was no organization to protect abused children, so the attorneys for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) took on her case. Her attorneys argued that laws protecting animals from abuse shouldn’t be greater than laws protecting children. Mary Ellen Wilson’s case went to court and the foster mom was convicted of assault and battery and given a 1 year sentence.

1636

Benjamin Eaton Becomes The First Foster Child In the US

Less than thirty years after the founding of the Jamestown Colony, the first American child, seven year old Benjamin Eaton, was placed into foster care.

1562

English Poor Laws Say Poor Children Can Be Placed Into Indentured Servitude Until They Come Of Age

This practice was imported to the United States and was the beginning of placing children into homes. Even though indentured service permitted abuse and exploitation, it was an improvement over almshouses where children didn't learn a trade and were exposed to unsanitary conditions and abusive caretakers. Various forms of indenturing children persisted into the first decade of this century. At this time, children were placed into these homes because their parents or guardians were deceased rather than because they had been abused in their home, as child abuse was largely socially accepted and legal. Today, foster children are usually removed from a home due to abuse rather than because they were orphaned.