Casey Family Services to Close

, a direct service agency that assists children and families in seven states with foster care, adoption, and advocacy services, with an office in Concord, will close its doors next year.

In letter from Patrick McCarthy, the CEO of the Anne. E. Casey Foundation, the funder of the agency, the Foundation’s board of directors made the decision after “a thorough review” of all its programs and initiatives.

“We have reached the very difficult decision that the time has come to discontinue this approach to supporting direct services, and to close our Casey Family Services operations,” McCarthy stated.

The foundation, which was created by Jim Casey, the founder of UPS, more than 36 years ago, established Casey Family Services “as a fully licensed, nonprofit child welfare agency dedicated to helping children in foster care” in an effort to improve the lives of vulnerable children in communities across the Northeast.

In his letter, McCarthy said, the Foundation believed that it needed to support “high quality services for many more children and families than we can reach through delivering service ourselves.” In order accomplish this mission, the Foundation would close Casey Family Services and instead, “play a stronger role in influencing the field of frontline practice as a whole” by investing in juvenile justice, mental health, substance abuse, and other programs, while interacting with “a much wider range of private nonprofit providers of these services than we currently do.”

The decision, McCarthy said, had nothing to do with the quality of services that Casey provided and everything to do with “the Foundation’s strategic direction.”

“We should all be extremely proud of the contributions of Casey Family Services in supporting families, working with foster parents, collaborating with public agencies, and providing outstanding care to children,” the letter stated. “Every bit of the success of CFS is due to its skilled and committed leadership team and staff. I deeply regret the significant disruption this decision will cause for them and other staff housed in CFS offices.”

As part of the email to employees, McCarthy sent out a three-page revised mission statement for the Foundation to help all involved “better understand our future directions.”

The agency will stop taking referrals immediately and staffers will work to ensure that all children currently being cared by the agency will transition to another agency by the end of the year. The agency will continue to employ workers until that time and will help with employment transitions. A small number of staffers will stay on until June 2013. According to sources, more than 100 children will be affected by the change. More than 350 employees currently work for Casey. About 280 will lose their jobs.

A spokesperson for the agency in Connecticut did not return requests for comment. Local employees for Casey Family Services also did not respond to requests for information.

Editor's Note: The number of potential unemployed workers has been corrected from an earlier version of the story.