Parents and Children

The Child Welfare Fund funds programs that prevent and/or mitigate the effects of trauma on very young children (0-3 years of age).

We primarily fund programs that work in metro New York and also those working with new immigrants.

The positive results from intentional parenting are proven to improve lifelong physical and mental health. Small changes can be simple yet profound, their importance and impact has been confirmed by contemporary neuroscience. It is this knowledge that drives everything the Child Welfare Fund does. We believe that healthy caregiver-infant attachment is crucial to the rest of a child’s life.

“If I had $37 billion, I would focus it on the crucial node where attachment skills are formed: the parental relationship during the first few years of life.”

-- David Brooks, “Of Human Bonding,” NY Times, July 2, 2006

What We Do

We focus our funding on programs that work with the youngest children, zero to three years-of-age when possible, who have experienced trauma.

  We fund and promote:

  • Programs that improve caregiver-infant attachment

  • Programs and policies that work to reduce early childhood stress and trauma and the effects thereof

  • Psychosocial services for unaccompanied immigrant minors and immigrant families with infants and toddlers 


"There is no such thing as a baby. . . A baby cannot exist alone, but is essentially part of a relationship."

-- Donald Winnicott, MD, 1947 radio broadcast.



Our History

Established in New York in 1992, the Child Welfare Fund initially focused on the general well-being of children of all ages and funded programs that supported those in the child welfare system. However, as research increasingly made it clear that early interventions with at-risk children and their caretakers was far more likely to prevent and/or alleviate the consequences of early childhood trauma, in 2011 the CWF decided to make the prevention of and recovery from early childhood trauma in the first three years of life its principal focus. In 2017 we expanded our giving to include families who have experienced trauma before or while immigrating to America, regardless of their physical location upon arrival here.