Home Society Founded to Protect Needy Children : Social services: Missionaries started agency in 1891 in downtown Los Angeles.

The Children’s Home Society of California began more than a century ago after two grieving medical missionaries returned from Jamaica, where they had buried their only son.

To help deal with their sorrow, Dr. and Mrs. J. R. Townsend dedicated their lives to needy children and founded CHS in the Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles in 1891.

The first child to be placed for adoption by the fledgling agency was a 4-year-old boy whose distraught mother had given up her son when she was unable to provide for him. Soon, CHS was caring for other children abandoned in the streets or sent to the society by the sheriff and police.

“We seek homeless, neglected and destitute children and become their friend and protector,” the CHS magazine said in 1898.

By that time, CHS had opened a Northern California office, and in 1911, the organization was selected as the first licensed child placement agency in California.

In the ensuing years, CHS broadened its services. Staff members cared for children during a deadly influenza epidemic. They housed abandoned children in the Great Depression and aided impoverished families migrating West from the Dust Bowl.

By the 1960s, CHS was the nation’s largest private adoption agency, placing hundreds of children a year in new homes. When the number of adoptions began to wane during the next two decades, CHS reached out with new programs, including foster care homes and day-care centers. The agency provided family counseling, lobbied on children’s issues and helped young people and their parents cope with stressful situations at home as part of an innovative “family preservation” program.

The agency’s public education programs were acclaimed, and a CHS-sponsored film, “Teenage Father,” won an Academy Award in 1979. Today, CHS programs stretch from Redding to San Diego and serve 10,000 children.

Through it all, the agency has survived on revenue from public service contracts, foundation grants, corporate gifts, individual donations and bequests. But the backbone of the organization has been its statewide network of auxiliaries and thousands of volunteers who raise more than $1.5 million a year for CHS.

The volunteers have relied on fund-raising events such as dinners, dances, bake sales, golf tournaments and road races. They also have sold cookbooks, exotic flowers and artwork. Many have solicited donations from friends and strangers.

With the controversy surrounding CHS’ president and chief executive officer, James T. Spradley Jr., and other CHS officials, many volunteers and longtime supporters fear that their agency will be tarnished and their work diminished.

But Charlotte De Armond, who was executive producer of the Oscar-winning CHS film, said the agency will survive. A former Spradley supporter, she believes he should step down.

“I love this organization, and I am proud of what it does for children,” said De Armond, who worked for almost 30 years as a CHS staff member and consultant before retiring in 1986. She also has donated thousands of dollars over the years. “The children come first,” she said, “and no individual should be given precedence over children.”