Clara McBride Hale (April 1, 1905 – December 18, 1992), also known as Mother Hale, was an American humanitarian who founded the Hale House Center, a home for disadvantaged children and children who were born addicted to drugs.
Early life
Clara McBride was born April 1, 1905, in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Clara married shortly after high school and moved to New York City where she studied business administration, cleaned, and worked as a domestic. She was 27 when her husband died. She had three children, Nathan, Lorraine and adopted son Kenneth. In 1938, her husband died from cancer, and Hale struggled to support her children through the Great Depression. Her rough life made it hard to financially support and care for her three children, consequently she had to find a job. Hale cleaned houses and continued her job as a janitor, laboring day and night to make ends meet.
Eventually she retired from these jobs to spend more time with her children. She stayed home with her children and in order to be as big a part of their lives as possible, Hale opened her own home daycare, initially keeping the children while their parents worked during the day. The children that she cared for found her home to be such a caring and loving environment they did not want to go home at the end of the day, most began to stay full-time only seeing their mothers on the weekends. She used her home as a day care for other struggling parents which later led her to become a foster parent. In the 1940s, she provided short-term and long-term care for community children in her home. She also found permanent homes for homeless children and taught parents essential parenting skills. Hale became a foster mother and got a license and took in 7-8 children at a time. By 1947-1968, she had taken care of over 40 foster children.
Jobs
Hale was living in Harlem, New York, where she retired from working as a domestic and started her work by beginning to help addicted children in 1969. Although Hale had originally opened her house as a way of making a living, it eventually led her to find her life calling. She took babies addicted to Heroin into her home, and within months, she was caring for 22 infants. Mother Hale became known for the work she did and became known as a mother to those who did not have one. At the age of 65 is when Hale began to take children in who were born addicted to their mother's drug habits during pregnancy.
This started in 1969 when Clara Hale's daughter, Lorraine, brought a mother and child who were addicted to drugs to Hale's home. She later got a home license as a "child care facility" in 1970, called the Hale House. A few years later Hale purchased a larger building, a 5 story home so there could be more space and more room to fit more, and in 1975 she was able to attain a license in child-care. It was officially known as Hale House. After that time, Hale devoted her life to caring for needy children. She took in children, free of charge, who were addicted to drugs and helped them through their addictive periods. She would raise the children as if they were her own and once they were healthy she would help to find families interested in adoption. She took it upon herself to make sure the families were a correct fit and even in some cases turned families down if she thought they could not provide a good enough home for the child. She eventually helped over 1,000 drug addicted babies and young children who were born addicted to drugs, children born with HIV, and children whose parents had died of AIDS. It was simple, she said; "hold them, rock them, love them and tell them how great they are."
Programs
Later her work with kids extended beyond just the care. Many programs were created for children and families to help them more. Some examples are Community-Based Family; which is a program for troubled youngsters; Time-Out-Moms, a program that helps the parents out by having a place for their kids when their parents needed to relax or breathe. They also had Children Helping Children, which was a program for juveniles. In addition, the Hale House launched research programs about problems of drug- or alcohol-addicted mothers and their infants to help educate the problems they can face. Families also went to this home that were infected with HIV or AIDS, and also the Hale house established programs for housing, educating, and supporting mothers after detoxification.