by Patti Connor
Staff Writer
When Hope Haven Children’s Clinic and Family Center opened in 1926 for the specific purpose of providing medical treatment for children with polio, the organization’s staff could have hardly imagined the scores of medical concerns, not to mention the myriad psychological issues, that would one day affect youngsters living in the early 21st Century.
Through the years, the clinic has evolved into a multi-discipline, special needs facility, targeting not only the physical difficulties its young patients face, but also their emotional, developmental and educational ailments and challenges.
Hope Haven opened in 1926 at its original location on the Trout River. It later moved to Atlantic Boulevard, and in 1990, it moved to its current location at 4600 Beach Blvd.
With a medical staff totaling about 50, “Our staff, as much as possible, works as a team to identify a treatment plan for the children which they can all support. Of course, they like to incorporate the families as much as possible,” said Laurie Price, executive director.
In recent years there has been a substantial increase in the number of calls received by its intake counselors from parents eager to arrange treatment for their children.
“We do so much diverse treatment that it’s hard to point to any one thing that we deal with more than others. I will say that lately we’ve gotten a lot of calls lately from parents of children with autism, which we recently began a program for,” said Price.
For families with children exhibiting problems of a nonspecific nature, a member of the staff goes into the school environment to help assess a youngster’s particular needs.
Patients come from virtually every walk of life. For those from lower-income or uninsured families, the clinic offers a variety of scholarships. The Delores Pass Kesler Foundation, for example, provides scholarships specifically for children from single parent families.
“Is it unusual for us to treat more than one child from the same family? Not at all, especially if the family happens to be dealing with issues such as divorce, which affects them all,” said Price.
With the opening of its Down Syndrome Center in 1996, the center began to establish an international reputation.
“Although there are other clinics that deal specifically with Down Syndrome,” she said, “ours is one of the most broad-based.”
Annually, the center treats about 5,000 children. Although they hail from all over, according to Price, they come primarily from a five-county area in Northeast Florida.
“We never take our eye off their learning, [and] how well we can best maximize that,” she said.