The Foundling has always been committed to addressing the immediate needs of our neighbors and when substance abuse was occurring within many New York City neighborhoods, The Foundling launched the Pathway Center for Family Treatment in Harlem, a comprehensive community-centered program to help mothers overcome their addictions, become responsible parents, and keep their families together.
The Foundling’s Independent Living Program is initiated to assist youth in foster care to prepare for independent living. Now known as our Supportive Housing program, The Foundling provides housing and social support to 18-25 year olds aging out of foster care, including counseling and connections to education and employment.
The Foundling moves its central office from East 68th Street to its current site at 590 Avenue of the Americas. The building houses The Maria Lucadamo Crisis Nursery and The Foundling’s administrative offices.
In response to changing needs, the Child Abuse Rehabilitation program, originally a residential program for children and their mothers, is reorganized and becomes a community-based program to prevent child abuse and neglect and includes a specialized child sexual abuse treatment unit.
The Foundling establishes a Head Start preschool program in Puerto Rico to serve the island’s isolated, rural areas and low-income urban neighborhoods. The program has grown to work with more than 1,500 families every year.
The Foundling opens group residences for adults with physical and developmental disabilities in Rockland County. Since then, The Foundling has grown its Developmental Disabilities Division, now operating over 100 residences, multiple day habilitation sites, and a number of other programs to support people with developmental disabilities as they achieve their personal goals and live their best lives.
St. Agatha Home for Children merges with The Foundling to provide compassionate care for children in a cottage-based campus setting. This program operated within The Foundling until 2005, and the site of St. Agatha’s continues to be used as part of The Foundling’s programs for people with developmental disabilities.
The Foundling opens its doors as a home for abandoned infants. Sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbon and two other Sisters of Charity placed a cradle on the doorstep of their brownstone on East 12th Street. They expected that it would take some time for word to spread, but that very night, they welcomed their first baby – a girl named Sarah.
The Foundling moved to community-based services, scaling back its central office and creating localized preventive programs within New York City’s five boroughs. The Staten Island Prevention Services Program, the first of these projects, is launched in Staten Island, aimed at strengthening families to prevent foster care placements.
Many of the children in The Foundling’s foster care program begin to emigrate to Puerto Rico. To ensure children and families were supported in their new home, The Foundling opens a foster care oversight program in Puerto Rico. Eventually, we shifted service from foster care and now operate Head Start and Early Head Start sites on the island.
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