[2] The organization's vision is "that every child will grow up in a safe, loving, and stable family,"[1] and its primary objective is to "Make Children a National Priority".
This resulted in the creation of the Bureau for the Exchange of Information among Child Helping Agencies (BEI) under the auspices and funding of the Russell Sage Foundation.
With the financial assistance of the Commonwealth Fund the CWLA was organized in 1920[3] with Carl Carstens as its CEO, and formally began work on January 2, 1921 in New York City.
[6][7] While originally founded as a federation of sixty-five service-providing organizations, Carstens, among the most prominent of national child welfare leaders and an opponent of orphanages, wielded it into a force for the development of regulations, especially with regard to child-placement and adoption.
[16] In June 2001, Child Welfare League Executive Director Shay Bilchik formally apologized for the Indian Adoption Project saying “No matter how well intentioned and how squarely in the mainstream this was at the time, it was wrong; it was hurtful; and it reflected a kind of bias that surfaces feelings of shame.”[17]