About Us

Partnering for Safe and Healthy Communities.

Cornerstones of Care is a behavioral and mental health nonprofit dedicated to partnering with children and families to build safe and healthy communities. For over 150 years, our passionate team members have been creating safe healing spaces for those impacted by trauma in Kansas, Missouri, and beyond. We are headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, but our lasting impact touches the lives of children and families in offices, classrooms, and homes across the region.

Our trauma-informed work is focused on three key service areas:

Youth & Family Support
Foster Care & Adoption
Education & Trainings

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Trauma-Informed Care: The Foundation of Everything We Do

Our dedicated team members are trained to provide an exceptionally high level of trauma-informed care through the certified trauma-informed Sanctuary Model. We partner with children and families to equip them with the skills, knowledge, and resources to lead safe, productive, and non-violent lives. We achieve this imperative by addressing fundamental behavioral health needs within our community, including:

Treating trauma and improving individual health
Reuniting families and placing children in nurturing foster homes
Caring for children and young adults with acute mental health needs
Nurturing the self-worth and dignity of all individuals under our care

Above all, our paramount goal is to establish a safe healing environment that upholds dignity and inclusion, enabling children and families to lead more fulfilling and rewarding lives.

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For the Safety and Health of Our Communities.

Our unwavering commitment lies in assisting children and families in any circumstance, at any time. Our dedicated team extends in-home and in-community services across the entire region.

Community surpasses mere physical surroundings; it embodies our relationships, daily interactions, shared activities, cultural fabric, strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations. We hold every facet of community close to our hearts as we meticulously develop and provide programs and services aimed at enhancing lives.

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FOSTER CARE

OUR IMPACT

Our History — A 150-Year Legacy

The history of Cornerstones of Care is one of great collaboration, ingenuity, and bravery, guided by several waymakers united by a belief that by partnering together, we can make a meaningful impact on the lives of children and families. Although this summary cannot begin to encompass the many brave individuals who shaped the Cornerstones of Care legacy, we hope it provides an understanding of who we are at our core and where we come from.

William Gillis (1797-1869), a prominent pioneer trader, is considered one of Kansas City’s founding members and one of several individuals whose contributions to the city inspired the development of Cornerstones of Care. However, it was William’s niece, Mary Gillis Troost, who established the “Gillis Home for Orphans” in 1870 with support from William’s estate after he died. She was a member of the “Women’s Christian Association” (WCA), a group of women that was also responsible for the development of the Armour Oaks Senior Living Community, which shares a campus with Cornerstones of Care’s Gillis Campus headquarters to this day. The early mission of the WCA was “to relieve the needy and distressed in this new and struggling city,” and the Gillis Home had a strong reputation in the city as a program that “made a difference.”

Blessed Frederic Ozanam (1813-1853), a French literary scholar, lawyer, journalist, social justice advocate, and one of the founders of the Conference of Charity, inspired a young social worker who established the “Ozanam Home for Boys” in 1948 in his honor. The facility began with one man and a group of volunteers who found and cared for six boys who had been abused and abandoned without a safe place to live.

Bebe Spofford (circa 1850s-1918) collaborated with the Institutional Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City to establish a children’s home. She donated her and her late husband’s 30-room mansion as the facility. The “Spofford Receiving Home for Children” opened its doors in 1916.

In 1997. Gillis, Ozanam, and Spofford united to establish the Gillis-Ozanam-Spofford (G.O.S.) Consortium. Their objective was to exchange best practices and maximize resources to enhance their level of care for children and families. In 1998, the Marillac Center joined the consortium.

Side Note: The Marillac Center began as an orphanage for boys in 1897 under a different name. It was founded by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent De Paul, an order of nuns that ran the orphanage. St. Louise de Marillac (1591 -1660) co-founded the Daughters of Charity. The Kansas City orphanage eventually became The Marillac Center, a psychiatric hospital for children and adolescents struggling with self-harm.

In 1998, the G.O.S. consortium evolved into Cornerstones of Care. Healthy Families, a Missouri-based agency that supported children and families who had experienced abuse or neglect, also became part of the Cornerstones of Care family of agencies. Together, these agencies provided comprehensive preventative and treatment services to children and families across the region for nearly two decades.

In 2017, the founding agencies came together as true building blocks or ‘cornerstones’ of compassionate care for even more children and families.

The Cornerstones of Care name was adopted to honor their expertise and historical significance, and the individual names of the founding agencies were preserved as campus locations within the unified Cornerstones of Care organization. This consolidation allowed us to pursue a shared mission and a grander vision of empowering our children, families, and communities. Today, Cornerstones of Care also has several office locations across Kansas and Missouri that expand our reach beyond our primary campus locations.