For over a century, Sunny Hills Services has treated emotionally and behaviorally disturbed, abused, and neglected children from the Bay Area and beyond with tailored residential, educational, mental health and community-based services.

In 1895 Queen Victoria was on the throne of England, Grover Cleveland was president of the United States, and in San Rafael, California, a widow died and left three children homeless. The orphanage created to house those children was a small house on E Street in San Rafael. Mrs. P.D. Browne was the founder and first president of the home, which was incorporated on June 8, 1895 as the San Francisco Presbyterian Orphanage and Farm. The original charter stated the purpose for the home was "the care, support, and education of children…including the teaching of trades and agriculture, maintaining, and conducting a farm."

In 1898, 20 acres were purchased in San Anselmo with the help of Mrs. Phoebe Hearst and Captain Robert Dollar, and by 1900 the orphanage (later called Sunny Hills) was caring for 135 children. In 1920 Captain Dollar donated 42 acres of pasture for a working dairy "as milk is a necessity to children." Much of this dairy land remains today as the San Anselmo campus.

After WWII, expanded foster care and government aid resulted in fewer orphans and young children needing institutional care. In 1955, as a response to these trends, the Child Welfare League of America requested that the agency begin a program to provide highly individualized care for troubled adolescents in a cottage living setting. That program began in 1956. Sunny Hills Services has been expanding its offering of services ever since.