History

BCYS History

The agency was founded by Mrs. Sadie Waterford Jones. Raised in Tennessee,
Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Mrs. Waterford Jones was a graduate of Langston
University where she excelled in physics, Latin, and calculus. She taught Latin at
Tuskegee Institute, was active in war work during World War I, and established
the Phylis Wheatley Community Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana before settling in
Chicago in 1926. In Chicago, Mrs. Waterford Jones gained a reputation as one of
the city’s prominent African-American leaders.

In the 1940s, Mrs. Waterford Jones became an employee of the Institute for
Juvenile Research and was also associated with the Chicago Area Project. She was
the first female and one of the first African Americans hired by Clifford R. Shaw
to become an organizer on Chicago's south side. Mrs. Waterford Jones began to
enlist a large group of women on the south side who began working with girls who
were ordered to appear in Juvenile Court. From these efforts, Mrs. Waterford
Jones organized a community group known as the Women's Service Committee which
was initially headed by Dr. Dorothy Sutton Branch.

Beatrice Caffrey, an attendance officer with the Chicago Board of Education, was
BCYS's first volunteer. In this capacity, she assisted Mrs. Waterford Jones in
program recruitment and attendance. The organizational name change coincided with
the initiative of the Board of Directors to assist youth through more formally
structured programs. Mrs. Waterford Jones was BCYS’s first executive director, a
position she retained until 1970.

One of the services of BCYS was to help the courts find foster homes for African-
American girls from broken and disruptive
enviornment.

Some of these girls were sent to foster homes, but most ended up in institutions.
This troubled Mrs. Waterford Jones who felt that there should be “an in-between
home” for such girls. Some of these girls, who often had been abused and
neglected in the critical stages of their lives, needed to find hope, encouragement,
and confidence in themselves.

The agency's mission is reflected in our central premise that local residents should
play an integral part of identifying and accessing the resources that are available to
assist community youth.

At Beatrice Caffrey Youth Service, our services are especially designed to be child
and youth centered in every respect and at every stage, from conceptualization, to
planning, to implementation. Beatrice Caffrey's specially designed children and youth
programs and services are implemented in such a way that each client is able to
benefit, either through direct services or through numerous referral sources.

Beatrice Caffrey Youth Service

Ms. Sade Waterford Jones