Our History Helping families and children in need… For more than 100 years, that’s what we've been doing here at Gateway. Whether with family counseling, foster care, credit advice or transitional living programs, we've helped thousands of Alabamians – children and adults – put their lives back together and face the future with a new sense of hope. Founded in 1891 by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Gateway was originally called The Mercy Home (shown at right) and provided basic social services to Birmingham-area women and children. In 1968, the organization briefly changed its name to Gateway. However, nine years later, the group joined forces with the Family Counseling Association. This alliance was then dubbed Family and Child Services, which it has remained until recently. In 1998, the organization’s leadership decided to reconsider the name Gateway. The more they thought about it, the more it seemed to genuinely describe the group’s mission. It suggested a passage from one place to another. It implied change, transition, movement and the opening of a door to something better. So, the name stuck. And on January 1, 1999, Family and Child Services officially changed its name to Gateway. The name Gateway, just like Family and Child Services, does not represent one program, but encompasses a whole host of programs designed to help families and children in crisis. We've gone by several different names over the past 100 years. But regardless of what we call ourselves, our mission has always been the same: helping families and children rebuild their lives and plan for promising futures. And that’s exactly what we plan to keep doing for many years to come.