New York's Newsboys

Staller provides a treasure trove of the ideas and practices of Charles Loring Brace. She uncovers his aims as revealed in his prolific writings and rich agency records and documents. What was children's aid and how did it differ from other 19th c. welfare? Readers will be drawn into provocative comparisons to modern services, they will be inspired by Brace's mission against formidable times, and they'll thank Staller for her contribution."

Auteur

Karen M. Staller, PhD, JD, is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. She is author of Runaways: How the Sixties Counter Culture Shaped Today's Policy and Practices; co-author of Seeking Justice in Child Sexual Abuse: Shifting Burdens and Sharing Responsibilities (with Kathleen Faller) and co-editor of the journal, Qualitative Social Work. Staller resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan with a pampered dog and a pair of sociable guinea pigs.

Texte du rabat

New York's Newsboys tells the tale of Children's Aid Society's flagship New York program, the Newsboys' Lodging House, opened in 1853. Conceived as part of a visionary intervention orchestrated by social reformer Charles Loring Brace, its policies and practices were forged from daily interactions with the city's impoverished, sometimes lawless, and entrepreneurial "newsies."

Résumé
New York's Newsboys is a lively historical account of Charles Loring Brace's founding and development of the Children's Aid Society to combat a newly emerging social problem, youth homelessness, during the nineteenth century. Poor children slept on the docks, pilfered, and peddled cheap wares to survive, activities which frequently landed them in prison-like juvenile asylums. Brace offered a radical alternative, the Newsboys' Lodging House. From there he launched a network of additional programs, each respecting his clients' free will, contrasting with the policing interventions favored by other reformers. Over four decades Brace built a comprehensive child welfare agency which sought to alleviate suffering, prevent delinquency, and divert children from a life of poverty. Using primary documents and analysis of over 700 original CAS case records, New York's Newsboys offers a new way to look at the foundational roots of social work and child welfare in the United States. In this book, Karen Staller argues that the significance of this chapter in history to the profession, the city of New York, and the country has been under appreciated.

Contenu

• Preface

• Acknowledgments

• Introduction

• 1. Mr. Brace's Arrival: Early Influences and New-York, 1848-1853
• 2. Family Life Among the Poor in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York
• 3. Creating the Children's Aid Society: Exploration and Experimentation
• 4. Opening the Newsboys' Lodging House: Proposal to Practice, 1854 1
• 5. Eddying Point: Mr. Macy's Central Office
• 6. The Earliest Lodgers: The Good and the Bad, 1855-1856
• 7. Advancing the Lines: Building an Anti-Poverty Agenda, Newsboys' Lodging House, 1855-1861
• 8. Mr. Macy's Record Books: Newsboys Lodgers and the Emigration Branch, 1861-1866 and Beyond
• 9. A Permanent Place: Building, Bridging, and Policy Advocacy in the Gilded Age
• 10. The Society Mr. Brace Built: A Life's Work

• Afterword: Charles Loring Brace's Legacy and Implications: Bridging Support for Poor Families