Our mission to end the child welfare crisis in our nation draws inspiration from early advocates in foster care history. By learning their stories, we better understand the issues we face today. Contrary to popular belief, child welfare services in the United States started with everyday individuals rather than the government. Men and women saw children in need and chose to act, unaware of the legacy their choices would leave behind. These early advocates had no guidelines, and many of their solutions were flawed. Yet their compassion, determination, and sense of responsibility motivated them to try. What often began as quiet efforts—offering daycare for working mothers, bringing an abandoned child home, organizing local support—became a movement that swept the United States. Their small, courageous steps laid the foundation for the foster care systems we know today. Read on to hear five inspiring foster care history stories that remind us that change starts with ordinary people doing what they can with what they have.
Charles Loring Brace (1826-1890)
Much of the initial inspiration for child welfare resulted from the large number of orphans on the streets in large cities. In the mid-1800s through the turn of the century, most were impoverished, immigrant, or minority children. These kids, whose parents passed away or couldn’t afford to care for them, had nowhere else to go.
As a resident of New York City, Charles Loring Brace saw these vulnerable children daily, and he felt moved to do something. In response, he founded the New York Children’s Aid Society and developed the “placing out system.” This strategy placed orphaned children in New York on trains and shipped them to families in the West. The program earned the nickname “orphan trains” and transported approximately 120,000 children during its existence.
The placing out system was a flawed solution. It focused on finding homes for children, but it couldn’t verify the quality of those homes. Without oversight, some children became little more than household or farm workers for the families who took them in. Still, many did end up in loving homes, and the placing out system is recognized as one of the first organized versions of foster care in the United States. Because of this, many consider Charles Loring Brace to be the “Father of Foster Care”.
Carrie Steele Logan (1829-1900)
In 1886, Carrie Steele noticed that many orphaned and abandoned children frequently took shelter at Union Station in Atlanta, Georgia. Born into slavery and orphaned herself, Carrie worked as a cleaner in the station. She felt deep compassion for these children and couldn’t ignore their vulnerable situation. During her shifts, Carrie placed the children she found in a box car to play and brought them back to her own home at night.
It soon became obvious that her two-bedroom house couldn’t contain the kids she brought home. Yet instead of limiting the number of children she took in, Carrie turned to grassroots fundraising. She wrote and sold an autobiography about her life to earn more money, which has sadly been lost to time. She also started involving the local community. Finally, she sold her house and constructed a bigger three-story build. The Carrie Steele Orphan’s Home was dedicated in 1892, making it the oldest black orphanage in the United States.
Even after her death in 1900, the orphanage was carried on by her husband, Josehia Logan, whom she married later in life. Now known as the Carrie Steele-Pitts Home, it consists of four group home residences for children and youth. It also offers programs like teen adoption support, life skills training, and residency for transition-aged youth.
Carrie Steele Logan’s incredible acts of service testify to the power and potential of everyday people, creating a legacy that’s still going strong 137 years later.
Jane Addams (1860-1935)
It would be difficult to write an accurate foster care history without including the contributions of Jane Addams. She lived in Chicago, another city with a large and often vulnerable population. In addition to fighting against rampant child labor practices, Addams co-founded the famous Hull House. This settlement house “provided kindergarten and daycare facilities for the children of working mothers; an employment bureau; an art gallery; libraries; English and citizenship classes; and theater, music, and art classes.” (About Jane Addams and Hull-House Settlement, Jane Addams Hull House Museum)
In other words, the Hull House educated and nurtured the children in its care. It also provided services for families to find better opportunities, a holistic approach not typically seen at the time. Though it wasn’t foster care, Hull House drew attention to the importance of child welfare, creating an environment for children to not just survive, but thrive even when parents were unavailable.
The example set by Hull House, as well as the rest of Jane Addams’s extensive advocacy, helped draw attention to child welfare issues on a national stage. Her efforts were instrumental in creating protective legislation, establishing child labor laws, and forming the federal Children’s Bureau. National foster care regulation and reporting now fall under this department.
Christian Carl Carstens (1865-1939)
Born in Germany, C.C. Carstens moved to Iowa as a child with his family. He became a teacher before earning his Ph.D. in 1903, later moving into the world of charity work. From the start, Carstens focused his work on vulnerable children and families, advocating for the protection and well-being of kids. He worked at several major organizations during his career, including the Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity, the New York Charity Organization Society, and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Carstens’ work, as well as his thorough research in child welfare, earned him a reputation as an innovative thinker in the field. He was ahead of his time in advocating for foster homes over orphanages; he argued that children receive better care in a family than in an institution. He also believed in the power of states and charities working together as “an harmonious whole” and expanding those services into new areas, which is largely what our strategy to end the child welfare crisis expands upon. In 1921, C.C. Carstens became the first director of the Child Welfare League of America. Under his leadership, the organization became one of the most active organizations in expanding and advocating for improved child welfare services, especially foster care. They also pursued extensive, detailed research to determine the root causes of child welfare issues and their most effective solutions.
With these achievements, it’s easy to forget that C.C. started as a high school teacher in Iowa. But when he found his passion for protecting vulnerable children, he learned as much as possible to make a difference.
Nicholas Winton (1909-2015)
When British stockholder Nicholas Winton visited Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1939, German aggression and violence against Jews weighed heavily in his mind. Many Jewish refugees fled to Czechoslovakia, but Nicholas believed it was only a matter of time before war threatened their lives again. Refusing to turn away, Nicholas helped arrange the transportation of Jewish children out of Czechoslovakia to be housed by British families. In other words, he organized an emergency foster care system. He remained in Prague for much longer than intended to create what became the Kindertransport. From March to September 1939, one flight and six trains took Jewish children to waiting families in Britain. Sadly, the 7th and final train was stopped by German soldiers as they left the platform. Nearly all the children on that train lost their lives in the Holocaust.
Amazingly, Nicholas kept his rescue efforts secret until his wife discovered his scrapbook in 1988, including photos and names of the Kindertransport children. Many of them, adults with families by that time, sought out the one who saved them from near-certain death. That year, Nicholas’ actions became public on an episode of That’s Life, where he sat in the live audience. The host shared the story and eventually asked if anyone in the audience owed their life to the Kindertransport. Unbeknownst to him, That’s Life had managed to locate some of the children. All the people sitting around Nicholas stood up, and for the first time in 50 years, he and the rest of the world saw the fruits of his efforts.
He may not be an American, but Nicholas’ story continues to inspire foster care advocates around the world. His actions highlight the importance of families’ willingness to step into hard places and love children in crisis.
What Heroes in Foster Care History Have in Common
The stories of these five foster care advocates reveal one key similarity: they were everyday people who turned their compassion into initiative. Rather than hoping another person or organization would do something, they took action themselves. None of them started with a clear plan. No one received training or special insight into child welfare. In nearly every case, with no prior models to follow, they created their own solutions. They remind us that everyone can do their part to end the child welfare crisis. We owe so much of our modern foster care system to these men and women who left an inspiring impact on foster care history. We’ve used their examples to inform our modern strategy for ending the child welfare crisis in America: the Well-Being Support Ecosystem. Click below to learn more!
