Mission: Protect abused children and strengthen fragile families

Vision: Create an exceptional experience that has the power to transform the lives of vulnerable children & families

• Longevity – more than three decades of continuous services, founded in 1972
• Strong track record of programmatic, administrative and fiscal excellence
• Stability & Independence - growing endowment, fully owned land and buildings and a strongly supported diversified fund raising plan
• An educated & accomplished professional staff
• Unduplicated - one of a kind programs serving at risk children & families

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Brownie’s Emergency Shelter
Brownie’s Cottage is a temporary, safe home for children through age 12 who have been removed from their homes due physical or sexual abuse, neglect, or abandonment. Twenty-three beds are available 24-hours a day, without exception for young children in immediate need of protection and a secure place to call home. The children are placed in our care by the State through the Children’s Network of SWFL and are with us an average of 30-45 days. The majority of the children leaving Youth Haven are placed in a foster home or with a relative.

Natural Helper
The Natural Helper program is our original child abuse prevention program providing in-home parenting education, individualized support and a variety of specialized services to address many challenges facing today’s families. We assist expecting families, or families with at least one child under the age of three, in overcoming obstacles and gaining self-sufficiency in order to ensure an enriched and nurturing home environment for their children. The Natural Helper program empowers families through home-based support to strengthen family relationships, create healthy parent/child bond, increase home safety, and enhance the development of children.

Positive Parenting
Positive Parenting is a seven week program that works directly with the parents of children 4-9 years old providing useful strategies & educational tools to strengthen their parenting skills. Parents come together to share thoughts and successes, gain support from one another, and hear useful and successful ideas that will enhance their enjoyment in this most important role.

DARE to Be You (DTBY)
DARE to Be You (DTBY) is a nationally-acclaimed program that brings parents and children together for fun, informative and interactive activities designed to educate parents and strengthen and enhance the parent / child relationship. This program, created for families with at least one child 4-6 years old, builds decision making, assertiveness, communication skills, responsibility & self-esteem in children and parents alike.

Caring for Families
Caring for Families is a comprehensive parenting education and support program for families in our community struggling to make ends meet due to recent job loss, reduction in work hours, or other pressing financial issues putting them and their children in significant jeopardy of becoming homeless. Geared towards those families with at least one child eleven years of age or younger, the primary focus of this one-on-one home-based program is to assist in family stabilization while addressing employment concerns, budgeting, and housing issues. Parenting skill education, guidance and support is also provided.

Family Counseling Center
Our Family Counseling Center is one part of our overall Children’s Behavioral Health initiative designed to meet the mental health treatment needs of young children and their families in our community. Our clinical staff, comprised of licensed clinicians, a consulting psychiatrist, and Counseling & Social Work interns through our partnership with Florida Gulf Coast University, provides emotional support, education and guidance for a variety of concerns confronted by today’s families. Although our area of specialization is counseling work with young children, we offer a wide array of individual and group mental health counseling services to children, adolescents, and adults to solve individual difficulties, improve relationships, promote healthy family dynamics and treat a range of behavioral and mental health issues. Psychiatric evaluations, medication management and crisis intervention are also provided.

Janette’s Cottage
Janette’s Cottage is our community’s only children’s mental health treatment residence providing young children with a variety of mental health needs the opportunity to receive behavioral therapy in a comfortable and warm home environment. This treatment residence is staffed 24-hours a day by degreed behavioral technicians, Master’s level clinicians and a consulting psychiatrist, all with extensive experience in the mental health treatment of young children.

Janette’s Cottage is open to children up to the age of 12 with severe behavioral and/or mental health challenges which impair their ability to function successfully at home and require a structured treatment setting with ongoing psychological and psychiatric therapy. Our goal is to identify and address each child’s specific therapeutic needs and assist in reintegrating the child back into the family’s home environment upon discharge.