The Vermont Children's Aid Society was founded in 1919 in response to the concerns of Vermont social reformers, charity workers, and public welfare officials over the alarming findings of children living in poverty. In 1918, the Vermont Conference of Social Work had secured the services of an American Red Cross social worker, Sybil Pease, to conduct a survey of the needs of Vermont children orphaned by the Spanish Flu epidemic and the World War. Her findings confirmed the suspicions of previous surveys, that child welfare problems in Vermont were pervasive, acute, and growing.

L. Josephine Webster, a graduate of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy with extensive social work experience in the Kentucky mountains, served as VCAS General Secretary from 1919 to 1934. In 1920, the Children's Aid Society opened a branch office in Bellows Falls to serve the southern counties of Vermont. Its first district agent, Harriett E. Abbott , held degrees from Vassar College and Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy and brought to Vermont many years of experience as a child welfare investigator in Illinois and New York state.

In the eugenics-conscious 1920s, Harriett Abbott initiated genealogical studies of the families of children on her case load and found a common interest in eugenics with Professor Harry Perkins, whose Heredity class at UVM was studying the eugenic implications of the allegedly inbred, problem families that Abbott had been investigating.

In 1925, Mrs. Emily Proctor Eggleston, an incorporator and sponsor of the Children's Aid Society, provided Harry Perkins with $5000 for Harriett Abbott's salary travel, and office expenses as field investigator for the Vermont Eugenics Survey. Shirley Farr, a sponsor and member of the Board of Directors of the Children's Aid Society, continued to fund the Eugenics Survey for the next ten years at $5000- $6000 per year. Both philanthropists had a long-standing interest in social welfare programs, particularly those directed towards the support of needy children in Vermont. Shirley Farr and L. Josephine Webster served on the Eugenics Survey Advisory Committee (1928-1936), and Miss Webster chaired the Subcommittee on the Handicapped for the Committee on the Human Factor of the Vermont Commission on Country Life. Harriett Abbott used the Children's Aid Society records in her "studies of degenerate families" for the Eugenics Survey in 1925-1828.

By 1930, references to the poor heredity of their clients had vanished from the VCAS Annual Reports, and a concerted effort was made to keep dependent children with their families whenever possible. During the Depression the VCAS was instrumental in implementing New Deal programs in Vermont: the Child Welfare Service, Aid to Dependent Children, and the state-wide Central Index, a file on dependent, delinquent, or handicapped Vermonters requiring public assistance. These state programs signaled a shift in the function of the VCAS from its proactive role in child welfare investigation and intervention to its current programs in child placement and family support. Today the Vermont Children's Aid Society offers adoption services, parent support groups, and post-adoption counseling.

References:

Ashburner, Catherine. "Shirley Farr," in Those Indomitable Vermont Women. Williston Vermont: Vermont State Division of the American Association of University Women, 1999, pp. 14-42.

Bergman, Harold, and Vonda Bergman. "These Are Our Own: The Vermont Children's Aid Society Comes of Age." Vermonter 45 no. 8 (1940): 183-88.

Vermont Children's Aid Society. Annual Reports of the Vermont Children's Aid Society, 1920-1965. Special Collections, University of Vermont Libraries.

Webster, L Josephine. The Vermont Children's Aid Society, Inc. The Early Years 1919-1934. Burlington, Vt.: Queen City Printers, 1964.