9.1: A Brief History of Child Welfare

A History of Child Welfare in the United States

The United States child welfare system varies according to state, but a common objective everywhere is the goal to enhance families’ abilities to care for their children. Additionally, the child welfare system encompasses foster care and adoption. Foster care is often meant to fill a gap in a child’s life when parents are unable to care for them due to abuse or neglect (PAFamiliesinc, 2014). According to 2018 statistics, there are approximately 437,000 children waiting in the foster care system (Child Welfare Information Gateway [CWIG], 2020a). Many of those children enter adulthood without a family. Beam (2013) highlights the situation of over 6,000 adolescents waiting in New York, and notes that only 6 percent are still asking for adoption at age 17. The majority of these youths expect to transition to independent living after giving up the hope of adoption (Beam, 2013).

Child welfare has continually revised what is normally the acceptable treatment of children.

Statistics regarding foster care outcomes are grim: Research suggests that between 11%-36% of children who “age out” of foster care become homeless during the process, and those children are at greater risk of problems like mental illness and addiction (Dworsky et al., 2013). Despite over a century of organized child welfare, services for families and children still face the challenges of system failures and complex individual needs. The social work profession can benefit from casting a glance at the history of the child welfare system.

History

There has always been some form of care for children in the United States, but organized child welfare did not exist before 1875 (Meyers, 2008). Prior to the mid-1800s, many impoverished children were taken into apprenticeships, but most often they received institutional care (Trattner, 1999). According to Trattner (1999), an insurgence of immigrants and a rise in dangerous factory work in the mid-1800s created not only a class of poor children, but also one that was at risk of illness and injury in the factory industry. Children whose mothers worked long hours were also at a higher risk of delinquency. At that time, society was concerned that the next generation ought to possess ideal character traits, and as such, a growing child welfare movement could function as a form of social control (Trattner, 1999).

Research clearly shows that foster children are at risk for a myriad of problems later in life.

Organized child welfare in the United States began with the New York Children’s Aid Society, which was founded in 1853 by Charles Loring Brace (Trattner, 1999). This “placing out” program, which matched children to families who were intended to meet their physical needs, as well as provide nurturance and the love of a family, is considered to be the beginning of foster care (Cook, 1995; Nelson, 2020). The Children’s Aid Society is most remembered for its orphan trains, which moved poor children – with or without parents – from New York City to the countryside (Cook, 1995). The orphan train ran until 1929 (Kidder, 2003).

Throughout the mid- to late-1800s, the crux of the child welfare movement became child rescue, an emphasis shaped by Brace and his organization (Nelson, 2020). However, Brace’s work often neglected screening or following up on the child’s situation with their new family. Nevertheless, a mindset grew that children needed nurturing, a philosophy that is still widely accepted in the United States (Nelson, 2020).

In 1874, child abuse entered the national consciousness with the case of Mary Ellen Wilson, a young girl who was harshly abused by her guardians. Myers (2008) claims that at this point there was no such thing as child protective services, and Mary Ellen’s rescuer relied on the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and its influential founder, Henry Bergh, to form a case to save Mary Ellen. In response to this situation, in 1875 the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was formed, the first organization devoted solely to child protection. At this point, child welfare remained charitable, and was not connected to government (Myers, 2008).

Despite over a century of organized child welfare, services for families and children still face the challenges of system failures and complex individual needs. The social work profession can benefit from casting a glance at the history of the child welfare system.

In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt and child welfare leaders held the White House Conference in support of the Mother’s Pension Movement, which was the predecessor of welfare as we know it. This movement advocated that children should not be removed from their homes solely due to poverty (Nelson, 2020). Indeed, the pensions resulting from this conference were only available to widowed and primarily white mothers; not to women of color, mothers with children born out of wedlock, divorced, or abandoned mothers (Nelson, 2020).

The early twentieth century saw the 1912 creation of the Federal Children’s Bureau, which dealt with investigating matters related to child and maternal well-being, and in 1921 the Sheppard-Towner Act. This was the first major federal law in the United States focusing on infant and maternal health, and it provided money for health services for mothers and babies (Rodems et al., 2011). However, it was during the Great Depression and the New Deal that the federal government took on a new role in welfare spending; for the first time, charity organizations were no longer the main sources of welfare, and the federal government provided financial relief for families in need (Myers, 2008).

The 1970s and beyond saw an abundance of policy changes which focused on the adoption process for families and safety.

Child welfare has continually revised what is normally the acceptable treatment of children. As Myers (2008) explains, in the middle of the 20^th century, child abuse factored more prominently in the national consciousness with the work of John Caffey, who revealed the abusive origins of some childhood injuries. In 1962 Henry Kempe coined the term “Battered Child Syndrome”, further drawing national attention to child abuse. Federal Children’s Bureau meetings were held in response, and this led to the formation of the first child abuse reporting laws. By 1967 all states had enacted such legislature (Myers, 2008).

The 1970s and beyond saw an abundance of policy changes which focused on the adoption process for families and safety. Shifts in fostering and adoption legislature included the 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (Gelles, 1998; Myers, 2008), the 1994 Multiethnic Placement Act (Curtis & Alexander, 1996), and the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (Gelles, 1998). Throughout the early 2000s, growth occurred in kinship adoptions and legally permanent kinship guardianships (Hegar & Scannapieco, 2017).

Attribution: Preibisch, R.E. (2024). A history of child welfare in the United States. MUsings Graduate Journal.