As interest in children continued to develop, the Children’s Aid Society of New York was founded in 1853 by Charles Loring Brace and a group of social reformers at a time when orphan asylums and almshouses were the only "social services" available for poor and homeless children (Shelden, 2001). Brace's theory of an organization devoted to helping poor children was radical for his time. A Methodist minister, Brace was determined to give children an alternative to life in the squalid slums and teeming New York City streets. His theories were grounded in the conviction that institutional care stunted and destroyed children. According to Brace, the answers to transforming New York's orphans and street children into self-reliant members of society
