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Chasing the Orphan train is a saga of one girl's experience immigrating to the United States from Ireland in the mid-1800s. Irish were not welcome in our cities and the tide only started to turn with the creation of associations like Tammany Hall in New York City. The New York City and Boston areas were accepting more Irish immigrants than any other cities. One segment of the population growing faster than ever as a result of immigration was the number of homeless children. New York City had between 10,000 and 30,000 homeless children in 1850. There were no children's homes or social services available, and the concept of families fostering children unrelated to them was not a consideration at that time.The first major response to deal with the situation was developed by various churches. Their response to this problem was to gather homeless children and ship them to rural areas where they could help the farmers and hopefully learn skills. Church groups took the lead and collected children suitable for placement with a family in rural America. Trains were just becoming the preferred way to travel and their outreach to mid-America made it possible to load cars with children and disperse them to families in other cities. Most often the children were like indentured servants. Many were required to work on the farm till age twenty and then they were free to go after receiving a stipend from the farm family. There were also some children adopted by their farm family.The family placement movement as it was known by these churches existed between the mid-1850's and the mid-1920s. It ended when States developed child welfare policies and departments. Although most of the children were transported by train to their new homes the term "orphan train" was not used during that time. Many children were not orphans, but instead were children in need of services and most likely without a home.This Saga follows the adventures of the oldest daughter in an Irish family immigrating to New York City during the first days of the orphan train. The father, mother and four children sailed across the Atlantic in steerage. The mother died during the voyage leaving to the oldest daughter the role of parenting the younger children. A New York church group seeing three young children unsupervised assumed they were homeless and swept them off the streets. The oldest girl then had the arduous task of chasing down the train and reclaiming her siblings who never were homeless.For forty years I worked as a Clinical Social Worker and eventually Director of a children's agency providing counseling, adoption services, foster homes and residential treatment. The Donald M. Whaley Home was opened in 1926 and part of the modern approach to child welfare. Most of the early children's homes, although licensed by the State, were still sponsored and run by various religious denominations. These agencies learned from the experience of the orphan trains and developed more effective foster care and adoption placements. In the 1970s The Whaley Home's name was changed to Whaley Children's Center to better reflect the services it continues to provide.In many ways, child welfare hasn't progressed as far as we'd like it. There are too many homeless children, too many children being abused and not enough families, agencies and professional care workers to meet the needs. Most states have been cutting budgets that used to go for children's services. This saga reflects many things I've learned in the child welfare field. Maternal and paternal instincts aren't present in everyone. Child abuse leaves scars that may never heal. Foster families and adoptive families do remarkable things, and children are resilient. In each case I learned that love is just one part of the care needed to heal wounded children.
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