In 1863, just a few years before Confederation, a group of Hamilton women met in St. Andrew's (now St. Paul's) Sunday School to consider the needs of homeless children. An association was formed, "to gather in the destitute female children to bring them up under proper influences and reclaim them from their idle and vicious habits". Starting in a small way with a half a dozen children and a matron, the home soon had 26 girls and boys and two semi detached houses on Barton street, between Hughson and John Streets.

The Children's Industrial School came into being by an Act of Incorporation on June 30, 1864. According to its constitution the object was: "to provide a home for children of such parents residing in Hamilton, as from crime, destitution or any other cause are unable to maintain their family in order that such children may be trained in the habits of piety, industry and virtue".

Many changes followed, including the establishment of the Girls Home and Boys Home in 1874; the emergence of the foster care system in the early 1920s; the establishment of Lynwood Hall Children's Centre in 1955; to the operating of a modern children's mental health centre in the twenty second century.

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