JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida’s oldest child-service agency ‘Daniel’ dedicated a new residential unit for teenagers with mental health and intellectual disabilities in Jacksonville’s Southpoint area on Thursday afternoon.
The new cottage will help the program serve youth ages 16-17 by providing a home, foster care services, and behavioral programs.
If it wasn’t for ‘Daniel’ Emily Smith would have never met her daughter.
“We began as her mentors. And we started meeting with her every single week, and you're talking about this shy little girl that would hide behind, she would hide behind some of the the workers that were there, and her therapist and she had a she had been through so much," Emily Smith, mom of a Daniel Family, said.
The Smith Family soon fell in love, and the adoption was finalized in 2020.
“We'd never heard of Daniel before. And it was amazing to be able to see so many people there, just for these kids around the clock. And they were teaching them true life skills and life skills down to cleaning and the proper way of doing things proper way of making beds," Smith said.
The Nonprofit started in 1884 as an orphanage. Today, over a century later It helps over 5,00 locally abused, abandoned and neglected children every year.
"We've just seen an increase of need over the last several years and knew that we needed to develop a program that really could just serve the unique challenges that these youth face and give them the area and the opportunity to grow and thrive in their own space,"Lesley Wells, the CEO of Daniel, said.
These beds are empty now and the furniture is still going into place, but the new cottage will house youth 16-18 with mental health and intellectual disabilities.
"Providing the space that these children need that so they can come here and heal and get back out into the communities be at foster care or their adoptive homes or their family home," Wells said
Leaders hope to have the cottage open and accepting children The end of this summer.