Mission

The Children’s Aid Society helps children in poverty to succeed and thrive. We do this by providing comprehensive supports to children and their families in targeted high-needs New York City neighborhoods.

What We Do

In the next decade, the majority of new jobs in America will require a college degree, yet more than one million youth drop out of high school each year. This education crisis disproportionately affects children in high-needs neighborhoods and perpetuates a cycle of inter-generational poverty.

For more than 160 years, The Children’s Aid Society has worked hard to help New York City's neediest children succeed and thrive. Every year, we provide a comprehensive range of services to tens of thousands of children – each of whom deserves a permanent escape from poverty and a chance to take part in the American Dream.

At Children’s Aid, we surround our youth with the vital health, education and family support systems they need to become healthy, well-adjusted and productive adults. We know these supports must be comprehensive and long-term in order to be truly effective.

To meet this challenge, we focus our work on a collective goal: to inspire the children in our care to achieve college graduation. By insisting on this aspiration for all children, we embrace the promise in each and every child at more than 45 locations in NYC and Westchester County.

Our History:
Throughout our long history, our programming has been driven by the needs of the children we serve. This proactive approach started in 1853, when Children’s Aid founder Charles Loring Brace established the Orphan Train Movement in response to an epidemic of homeless children.

Even today, Children’s Aid remains at the forefront of children’s services. The Carrera Adolescent Sexuality and Pregnancy Prevention Program has been replicated or adapted at over 50 locations in 21 different states. The community school model has been adapted by public schools throughout the U.S. and as far away as Vietnam. Children’s Aid’s concurrent planning approach to foster care became the basis for the federal 1996 Adoption and Safe Families Act, which defines today’s modern foster care system.