HOUGHTON – U.P. Kids is an outgrowth of the Good Will Farm, which was located near the Michigan Tech campus. The Good Will Farm began in 1899 as an orphanage and a school. In 2012, the name was changed to U.P. Kids and in 2013 the organization moved to its new location in the former DSS&A depot at 57 Huron Street in Houghton. While U.P. Kids offers many programs and services, it no longer operates as an orphanage.

“When we sold the building, we decided to get out of residential,” Mark Lambert, executive director of U.P. Kids, said. “We had two homes, another home next door, and we used to serve girls in there. When we sold the property, we sold all the property. Part of the agreement on the sale was that we could have the smaller home for 18 more months to get ready to do the next stage – buy another home and move on.”

There were several factors resulting in the organization giving up its residential program, according to Lambert.

“It’s always about money, but a lot of things happened,” he said. “When I first started, about 17 1/2 years ago, there weren’t many community programs that worked directly with the families to try to prevent removal.”

Over the years, however, there has been a gradual shift from simply removing children from homes for various reasons to working with the children, and the families, through in-home programs before removal becomes necessary.