Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children

Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children. A New York-based licensed and Hague-accredited non-profit providing adoption services, which includes the continuum of counseling and support services to members of the adoption triad: birth parents, adoptive families, and adoptees. 

They provide interim care for infants as the biological parents make a plan for the child’s future, and also specialize in the adoption of older children, sibling groups, and children with special needs.

Spence-Chapin‘s roots can be traced to the work of Clara Spence and Dr. and Mrs. Henry Dwight Chapin.

Working on behalf of babies and birth mothers, they each established nurseries in the early 1900s for infants abandoned in hospitals and shelters. The two nurseries merged in 1943 and became Spence-Chapin Adoption Service.

Taking care of the undernourished and neglected children in their home, Henry Dwight Chapin, a specialist in infants, and Mrs. Chapin established the Alice Chapin Nursery in 1911.

For 20 years Mrs. Chapin served as the president of the nursery. Mrs. Chapin expanded her work first into the Children’s Aid building at Lexington Avenue and 127th Street and then purchased an old Chelsea house on West 22nd Street.

She retired in 1936 when her husband became ill but remained active for years as honorary president of the Spence‐Chapin Services. One year after Dr. Chapin‘s death in 1942, the nursery joined the Spence Alumni Society to form the Spence‐Chapin Adoption Service.

In 2004, Spence-Chapin agreed to preserve and manage Louise Wise Services’ adoption records. Spence-Chapin also maintains the Talbot Perkins and Sophia Fund adoption records.