In Baltimore City, the Commission on Aging and Retirement Education [13] presented the Barbara Mikulski Caregiver Award to FCS in 2005.
The organization known as Family and Children's Services of Central Maryland was the result of a combination of predecessor agencies dating back to 1849.
[15] The records from FCS predecessor agencies can be found in the Special Collections section of The Milton S. Eisenhower Library, The Johns Hopkins University (Ms. 360).
As industrialization began to replace an agrarian economy, many citizens left their rural communities only to find themselves unprepared to deal with urban life.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Baltimore Mayor Elijah Stansbury Jr. called for delegates from each of the city's wards to meet and plan for an efficient relief administration.
In 1881, Daniel Coit Gilman, president of The Johns Hopkins University, helped to found the Charity Organization Society (COS) modeled on a similar agency in Boston.
The primary goals of FC would be service to the family, including "securing medical treatment, finding employment, searching for missing husbands, straightening out domestic difficulties, instruction in household economics, and strengthening connections with church and relatives."
Persons prominent in the Association during this period include Gaylord Lee Clark, Anna D. Ward, Doris Slothower, and Dorothy Pope.
Rehabilitative services were put aside during the early years of the Depression as the Agency struggled to aid families and at the same time to get the City and State to assume some responsibility.
Gaylord Lee Clark, president of FWA in 1929, called upon the Governor to appoint a Commission to investigate the social welfare needs of the State.
When the Baltimore Emergency Relief Commission was set up in 1933 with a pipeline to federal funds, the FWA moved to resume its function, "the promotion of adequate family life through casework service."
Final mergers joined the Society for the Protection of Children from Cruelty and Immorality and the Shelter for Aged and Infirm Colored Persons in 1943.