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St. Ann's Center for Children, Youth and Families, formerly known as St. Ann's Infant and Maternity Home, is administered by the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. It is located at 4901 Eastern Avenue in Avondale, Maryland. It provides housing and support to pregnant and parenting young women and their children, as well as quality day care to the children of working families. [1]
Prior to 1860 and the beginning of the Civil War, three Daughters of Charity came from Emmitsburg, Maryland, to Washington, D.C., where they established the city's first foundling home. In 1861, St. Ann's initiated its first education and job-training program to prepare single mothers to become family breadwinners. [2]
On March 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress to incorporate St. Ann's Infant Asylum, as it was then called. St. Ann's was chartered "for the purpose of establishing and maintaining in the city of Washington, in the District of Columbia, an institution for the maintenance and support of foundlings and infant orphan and half orphan children, and also to provide for deserving, indigent, and unprotected females during their confinement and childbirth." The asylum was charged with caring for the city's growing number of abandoned children and unwed mothers of all races and religions, many of whom had no place else to turn. For 83 years St. Ann's occupied the old British Embassy at 24th Street and K Street, Northwest. [2]
In 1949, St. Ann's started providing affordable day care for working mothers with young children to further assist the Washington community. To meet the growing need for space and services, in 1962 St. Ann's moved from the city to a larger facility in Avondale, Maryland. [3] In 1996, it was expanded to include a transitional apartment facility to help impoverished, young single mothers, and their children, make the transition to independent living. [2]
St. Ann's has been known by several names since its founding. Throughout most of its history, the organization was known as St. Ann's Infant and Maternity Home. In 2012, the name was officially changed to St. Ann's Center for Children, Youth and Families to better reflect the full range of clients served and programs offered. [4]
St. Ann's currently operates transitional housing programs for at-risk mothers and their children as well as a community day care center. As a residential facility, St. Ann's operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. [5]
The program offers residential care for pregnant adolescents and young mothers up to age 22 and their babies. Extensive services include an accredited high school, medical care, parenting classes, life skills training, day care, individual and family counseling, and social and cultural activities. [6]
In 1996, St. Ann's opened Faith House to address the critical housing need for young, homeless mothers in our community. In 2013, the organization expanded its transitional living program with the opening of Hope House, a new housing unit for homeless single mothers and their children. In the Faith House and Hope House programs, vulnerable young families receive resources and support to help them transition to financial independence and self-sufficiency in two years. [7]
St. Ann's Child Care Center provides affordable, developmental day care for infants and preschool children in the community and in residence, including children with special needs, and children from low-income, single parent families and from families in crisis. [8]
Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring in an illegal way, with the intent of never resuming or reasserting guardianship. The phrase is typically used to describe the physical abandonment of a child, but it can also include severe cases of neglect and emotional abandonment, such as when parents fail to provide financial and emotional support for children over an extended period of time. An abandoned child is referred to as a foundling. Baby dumping refers to parents leaving a child younger than 12 months in a public or private place with the intent of terminating their care for the child. It is also known as rehoming when adoptive parents use illegal means, such as the internet, to find new homes for their children. In the case where child abandonment is anonymous within the first 12 months, it may be referred to as secret child abandonment.
Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks of age to 18 years. Although most parents spend a significant amount of time caring for their child(ren), child care typically refers to the care provided by caregivers that are not the child's parents. Child care is a broad topic that covers a wide spectrum of professionals, institutions, contexts, activities, and social and cultural conventions. Early child care is an equally important and often overlooked component of child's developments.
The United States Children's Bureau is a federal agency organized under the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families. Today, the bureau's operations involve improving child abuse prevention, foster care, and adoption. Historically, its work was much broader, as shown by the 1912 act which created and funded it:
The said bureau shall investigate and report to [the Department of Commerce and Labor] upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people, and shall especially investigate the questions of infant mortality, the birth-rate, orphanage, juvenile courts, desertion, dangerous occupations, accidents and diseases of children, employment, legislation affecting children in the several states and territories.
The Company of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, commonly called the Daughters of Charity or Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent De Paul, is a Society of Apostolic Life for women within the Catholic Church. Its members make annual vows throughout their life, which leaves them always free to leave, without the need of ecclesiastical permission. They were founded in 1633 by Vincent de Paul and state that they are devoted to serving the poor through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
The University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) is a private, not-for-profit corporation founded in 1984 and based in Baltimore, Maryland. It owns and operates 13 hospitals in Maryland, and has more than 2,500 licensed beds, 122,300 annual admissions, and gross patient revenues of $4.4 billion annually. University of Maryland Medical System medical staff work with University of Maryland School of Medicine specialists to provide primary and specialty care at more than 150 locations across the state, including a network of academic, community, and specialty hospitals.
The Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill were founded by Sister Aloysia Lowe. In 1870, she and sisters Blanche O'Keefe, Maria Theresa O'Donnell, Maria Kavanaugh and two novices were sent to western Pennsylvania from the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati and began their work, founding and staffing schools. The sisters later expanded their work to include healthcare.
A prison nursery is a section of a prison that houses incarcerated mothers and their very young children. Prison nurseries are not common in correctional facilities in the United States, although prior to the 1950s many states had them and they are widespread throughout the rest of the world.
The Orphan Train Movement was a supervised welfare program that transported children from crowded Eastern cities of the United States to foster homes located largely in rural areas of the Midwest. The orphan trains operated between 1854 and 1929, relocating from about 200,000 children. The co-founders of the Orphan Train movement claimed that these children were orphaned, abandoned, abused, or homeless, but this was not always true. They were mostly the children of new immigrants and the children of the poor and destitute families living in these cities. Criticisms of the program include ineffective screening of caretakers, insufficient follow-ups on placements, and that many children were used as strictly slave farm labor.
Sister Irene was an American nun who founded the New York Foundling Hospital in 1869, at a time when abandoned infants were routinely sent to almshouses with the sick and insane. The first refuge was in a brownstone on E.12th St. in Manhattan, where babies could be left anonymously in a receiving crib with no questions asked. The practice was an echo of the medieval foundling wheel and an early example of modern "safe haven" practices.
Freeing nearly 13,000 girls from indentured servitude has been a major accomplishment of the Nepal Youth Foundation (NYF), a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The mission of NYF is to provide children in Nepal with education, housing, medical and nutritional care, and general support.
Avondale is an unincorporated community in Prince George's County Maryland, United States. It is contained between Eastern Avenue NE to the south, Queens Chapel Road (MD-500) to the east, and the Northwest Branch Anacostia River to the north and west.
The New York Foundling, founded in 1869 by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity, is one of New York City's oldest and largest child welfare agencies. The Foundling operates programs in the five boroughs of New York City, Rockland County, and Puerto Rico. Its services include foster care, adoptions, educational programs, mental health services, and many other community-based services for children, families, and adults.
Edward John Herrmann was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Columbus in Ohio from 1973 to 1982. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Washington D.C. from 1966 to 1973.
Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital is a United States 102-bed non-profit children's hospital set in the scenic neighborhood of Mt. Washington in Baltimore, Maryland, that provides long-term care for children with complex health problems. MWPH is jointly owned by Johns Hopkins Medical System and University of Maryland Medical System. Funded by patient revenue and private charitable donations, Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital is a comprehensive sub-acute care facility for children from birth to young adult; MWPH provides transitional and support care for a variety of conditions, including premature birth, serious and chronic illness, traumatic injury, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, childhood obesity, diabetes, feeding problems, among others. Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital also has a unit at Prince George's Hospital Center in Cheverly, Maryland. MWPH accreditations include Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities and The Joint Commission.
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York is one of the largest charitable organizations in the New York metropolitan area. It is a federation made up of 90 social service agencies throughout the 10 counties of the Archdiocese of New York - Bronx, Dutchess, New York, Orange, Putnam, Richmond, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster and Westchester. It is part of a nationwide network of local human service organizations that form Catholic Charities USA—the fourth-largest social service provider in the United States, according to Forbes, and the 10th largest fundraising organization in the United States, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Family support is the support of families with a member with a disability, which may include a child, an adult, or even the parent in the family. In the United States, family support includes "unpaid" or "informal" support by neighbors, families, and friends, "paid services" through specialist agencies providing an array of services termed "family support services", school or parent services for special needs such as respite care, specialized child care or peer companions, or cash subsidies, tax deductions or other financial subsidies. Family support has been extended to different population groups in the US and worldwide. Family support services are currently a "community services and funding" stream in New York and the US which has had variable "application" based on disability groups, administrating agencies, and even, regulatory and legislative intent.
Catholic Guardian Services (CGS) is a human services non-profit organisation sponsored by the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York with programs to help members of the disadvantaged population in the New York metropolitan area.
Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) is a non-governmental organization founded in 1968 in the Washington DC metropolitan area. Initially created to empower Latino youth, it later expanded its mission to include youth of all races with the aim of empowering young people and their families to "achieve a successful transition to adulthood through multi-cultural, comprehensive and innovative programs that address youths' social, academic and career needs."
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New York Nursery and Child's Hospital was an obstetrics and pediatrics hospital founded on May 2, 1854 by Mary Ann Delafield DuBois and Ana R. Emmit in New York City. Initially the Hospital served as a foundling home and provided care for New York's working women and their children. It was a pioneer in treating infants under the age of two.