The Reverend Canon Charles Jupp was ordained in 1868 and became Rector of St. Margaret's Church in Aberlour from 1874. He was warden and founder of an orphanage there in 1875 when he began a lifetime's work with destitute children.

The first home was a small four-room cottage on the banks of the River Lour in Speyside for "four mitherless bairns".

Canon Jupp was a fervent fund raiser and became known as "The Beggar of the North" for his activities including door-to-door collections and sales of unwanted clothes. Within three years a new building was created which accommodated 30 children. Seven years on the Aberlour Orphanage had room for 100 children and continued to grow despite the intervention of two World Wars.

Times changed however, and the use of large residential homes ceased as children were placed in smaller, family type, care homes. By the mid-1970's the Aberlour Child Care Trust, as it had become, had 11 children's homes spread across Scotland. Moving with the times the focus of the Trust now is on developing services for disadvantaged children and young people in Scotland.

The Trust gives examples in its 1999 Annual Report of the issues that in the 21st century confound attempts to get families and children out of their despair:

• "The parent who is too heavily in debt, too ill or who has too many caring responsibilities" that prevent a return to work.

• "Children "...locked into a vicious cycle of low incomes, low aspirations and low achievement on housing estates where loan sharks and drug dealers flourish."

• "Their playground is a concrete posted area which is usually full of dogs mess and syringes, and housing is in an old tenament with no lifts...."

• "Rent arrears locks them most firmly into unemployment and the poverty trap as they cannot afford to take the lowly paid jobs that are available"

• "About "one in seven young people run away from home and stay away overnight ... "

• "The number of children diagnosed with autism has increased dramatically over the past decade..."