Queens Centers for Progress was founded over 50 years ago, as United Cerebral Palsy of Queens, by a group of parents who needed services for their children with cerebral palsy. The not-for-profit organization’s first services were delivered from the basement of a wood-frame house in Queens, now affectionately referred to as the “haunted house.” At the time, it was run in consultation with local hospitals.

Initially, UCP of Queens offered therapy and educational programs for children with cerebral palsy; as the children grew, we began offering vocational services, including in-house training workshops. Construction began on our first fully dedicated building, at 82-25 164th Street, in 1958.

The children’s program grew, and as the children themselves grew they needed services designed for adults. The building at 82-25 164th Street was doubled in size in 1966 to accommodate the beginning of vocational services.

In the early 1970s, in response to the de-institutionalization movement that allowed many people who had been living in developmental centers to move into the community, agencies like UCP of Queens, founded to serve individuals with a specific disability, expanded their services.

QCP’s Adult Services building, at 81-15 164th St., was built in 1974, and reflected a great increase in the number of adults needing treatment, vocational, and life-skills training services. In the 1980s, as the people we served aged, we added the senior GOALS (Growing Older Accessible Life Services) program, emphasizing, community-based recreation and health education for people of retirement age with developmental disabilities. GOALS is now known as the " Community Connections Center."

We opened our first residential home in 1979, in Jamaica Estates. Since then, we have opened nine more, with additional ones planned.

In 2001, our name was changed to Queens Centers for Progress, to reflect the wide variety of developmental disabilities served by our programs. QCP now has a staff of more than 600 and an annual budget of $28 million; funded through federal, state, and local government sources, contract services and private contributions.