ECS: Making Communities Stronger

ECS offers an array of human service programs that help individuals and families overcome the impact of poverty.

Our programs focus on achieving three key impacts:

• Families Stay Together

• Children and Youth Thrive

• Communities Become Stronger

United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania Donor Choice #00019

Description:
ECS Keeps Families Together by:

• Sheltering homeless women and at-risk children. ECS safely houses homeless women and at-risk children and helps them move toward permanent housing and self-sufficiency.

• Promoting permanency and safety. ECS child welfare programs ensure at-risk children live in homes free from abuse, neglect, and violence.

• Encouraging good parenting. ECS programs help individuals take charge of their own lives. They help adults to raise and maintain a family, maintain recovery from substance abuse, and practice good physical and behavioral health.

• Promoting functional literacy and life-long learning opportunities. ECS programs teach reading and computer literacy and provide opportunities for earning a GED, high school diploma, furthering education or accessing employment resources.

• Helping seniors live independently in their own homes. Low-income elderly receive in-home supportive services designed to keep them self-sufficient and preserve their dignity.

ECS helps Communities Become Stronger by offering:

• Civic engagement opportunities. ECS helps people get involved in their communities as advocates and active participants.

• Prison ministry. ECS ministers to persons who are incarcerated and helps to ensure that ex-offenders are responsibly and successfully integrated back into the community.

• Chaplaincy training. ECS equips people to provide pastoral care in their own parishes and out in their communities.

ECS helps Children and Youth Thrive by helping them:

• Succeed in school. ECS programs provide children with the literacy tutoring and homework help they need to be successful in school and in life.

• Choose healthy behaviors. Other programs assist teens to build leadership skills and self-esteem by engaging them in decision-making and helping them to make a difference in their own communities.

History:
History of Episcopal Community Services

On May 1, 1870, Bishop William Bacon Stevens, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, founded the Protestant Episcopal City Mission, known as the City Mission. The City Mission pooled and coordinated resources throughout the Diocese of Pennsylvania to cope with the critical needs of the region's poor.

The City Mission provided material assistance, spiritual comfort and charitable relief to the sick and the poor. In the early days, institutional care facilities were set up, including the Church Home for Children, providing shelter for orphans; the Home for Consumptives, in Chestnut Hill, which treated tuberculosis sufferers; and Sick Diet Kitchens, which offered meals for the invalid poor. Many of these early programs were staffed by volunteers, ministers and untrained workers. The City Mission also provided spiritual comfort through chaplaincy in these institutions, and in prisons and hospitals-an area of service still in existence today.

The relationship between the Diocese and the City Mission changed over the years. Bishop Stevens handed the direction of the City Mission to an independent Board of Council that consisted of clergy and lay members of the Diocese. In the early 1900's, the Canon of the Diocese was amended to more explicitly define parishes role in the support of the City Mission. Instituted in what are now known as ECS Sundays, it was enacted that "every Rector and Minister-in-Charge of a Congregation in the Diocese shall annually, in some way, present the cause of the City Mission to his people and bespeak their support of its work."

In 1906 the City Mission gained its third and current home, Old St. Paul's Church, at 225 South Third Street. By then, nearby Christ Church and St. Peter's were sufficient to meet the needs of Episcopalians in Society Hill. Old St. Paul's was designed by John Palmer and Robert Smith, and when it was finished in 1761 it was the largest church building in Pennsylvania. In the 1980's, ECS undertook major exterior and interior renovations, modernizing the entire building.

The Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal marked a turning point in the evolution of services to families. In the 1930's, these events and the new social work profession forged a closer partnership between the public and private sector. Under this new model, the government provided a base level of support and relief to the poor, while contracted agencies became responsible for supplementing that support and expanding the range of services to meet client needs. In recognition of this new environment, in 1958, the City Mission was renamed Episcopal Community Services (ECS).

Throughout its history, ECS has adapted its services in response to changing community needs. When a cure for tuberculosis was found, the agency redirected its energies to serving persons with other long-term illnesses-the frail elderly and children with acute or chronic medical conditions. In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, ECS trained its social workers and home health aide staff to care for people with AIDS in their homes. ECS staff provided technical expertise and guidance as founding members of one of Philadelphia's first AIDS care agencies.

Many of the institutional services first established by the City Mission no longer exist; however, the mission of the human service agency remains largely unchanged. Today ECS remains committed to helping people overcome the impact of poverty. The welfare reform of the late 1990's required new models of service and new initiatives to help working families living in poverty. ECS continues to creatively respond to the needs of its clients, brightening futures and improving lives.

Contact people:

Kristin Webb, Volunteer Services Manager, (phone), (email) Debbie Atkinson, Development Dept Coordinator, (phone), (email)

Office fax number: 215-351-1497

Address:

225 South Third St. Philadelphia, PA 19106 (See a map)

Web Site: http://www.ecs1870.org

Directions:

ECS is located on Third Street between Locust and Walnut Streets in Center City Philadelphia. The agency headquarters are in Old St. Paul's Episcopal Church, and the building is open during business hours.   Nearest Bus Stop: #9, #42, #21, #76, #12, #40, #57, 2 - 5 minute walk For maps or information, please see http://www.septa.com/

Miscellaneous Information

Are court referrals welcomed?
	Yes