Company Profile
St. Ann's Center for Children, Youth and Families
Company Overview
Throughout its 153 years, St. Ann’s has been a pioneer in developing programs to help the area’s most vulnerable women and children, adapting our services to respond to the needs of the day. St. Ann’s has served as an orphanage, an adoption agency, an emergency shelter for abused children, a training ground for teenage mothers and an affordable day care program for working families. The foundlings and unprotected females we helped in 1860 are seen in the children and young women we serve today.
- See more at: www.stanns.org
Company History
The vision of St. Ann's began prior to 1860 and the beginning of the Civil War. Three Daughters of Charity, a religious order of women dedicated to helping the poor, came from Emmitsburg, Maryland to the Nation's Capital where they established the city's first foundling home. In 1861, St. Ann's initiated its first education and job-training program to prepare single mothers to become family breadwinners. A critical marker in St. Ann's evolution occurred on March 3, 1863 when, despite the spirit of chaos and instability in Washington DC, President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress to incorporate St. Ann's Infant Asylum, as it was then called.
As stated in that document, St. Ann’s was chartered “for the purpose of establishing and maintaining in the city of Washington, in the District of Columbia, an institution for the maintenance and support of foundlings and infant orphan and half orphan children, and also to provide for deserving, indigent, and unprotected females during their confinement and childbirth.” In Lincoln’s time, Washington was a city at war, overrun by soldiers, uprooted civilians, and businessmen hoping to make money supplying the military. St. Ann’s Infant Asylum was charged with caring for the city’s growing number of abandoned children and unwed mothers of all races and religions, many of whom had no place else to turn.
In the years that followed, the need for St. Ann's services grew. More Sisters, larger facilities and expanded programs were added. For 83 years St. Ann's occupied the old British Embassy on K Street, Northwest, and our reputation became identified with this phrase: When there was nowhere else to turn, St. Ann's was there.
In 1949, St. Ann's started providing affordable day care for working mothers with young children to further assist the DC community. To meet the growing need for space and services, in 1962 St. Ann’s moved from the city to a larger facility in Hyattsville, Maryland, our current home. Another expansion took place in 1996, when St. Ann's opened a new building on its Hyattsville campus. Faith House, as it is called, is a transitional apartment facility built to help impoverished, young single mothers, and their children, make the transition to independent living.
St. Ann's has been known by several names since its founding. For the most recent decades, it was know as St. Ann's Infant and Maternity Home. In 2012, the name was officially changed to St. Ann's Center for Children, Youth and Families to better reflect the full range of those we serve.
Benefits
St. Ann's offers the following benefits: Group Health Plan, Voluntary Short-Term Disability, Life Insurance, Voluntary Dental Plan, Supplemental Life Insurance, 403(b) Retirement Plan, Paid Holidays, Paid Sick Leave, Paid Annual Leave, Tuition Reimbursement, Free Parking, Cafeteria Services.