The Gladney Center for Adoption is 130 years old in 2017! We celebrated all year long by sharing fun and interesting adoption facts about our history and culture. Check out these 6 facts that we put together in December.
- In 2012, Gladney celebrated our 30,000 placement.
- Gladney’s Superkids is a humanitarian aid initiative within the Asia Waiting Child. Starting as a tiny team providing services to special needs children in a single facility in Shanghai in 2007, this initiative has grown to a broad coalition of
physicians, early childhood development specialists, teachers and volunteers who've aided 500 children in orphanages across China. The goal: to improve the lives of children in Chinese orphanages via adoption advocacy, medical and rehabilitation services. Learn more about Gladney’s Superkids.
- Ruby Lee Piester, as executive director of Gladney, provided better educational offerings for birth mothers through collaboration with the Fort Worth public school system and Tarrant County Junior College while the Gladney Campus was on Hemphill Street. Since Gladney’s move to our current location at 6300 John Ryan, we collaborate with the Crowley Independent School District. Gladney also offers our Next Steps program which is a free lifelong service to our birth parent clients.
- The State of Texas recognized the significant role the agency has played in state history and placed historical marker #5326 on the Hemphill Street campus in 1974.
- The current campus is located in southwest Fort Worth at 6300 John Ryan Drive, in an area that is near both commercial and residential development, yet secluded enough to provide a true campus-like setting.
- In 2011, Gladney's New Beginnings Program brought The Heart Gallery to Gladney's campus. The Heart Gallery is a traveling photographic exhibit created to find loving, forever families for children in foster care. The Heart Gallery of Texas is a collaborative project of over nine Heart Galleries across the state that are created to increase the number of adoptive families for children needing forever adoptive homes.