The Lucy Daniels Center, which has provided mental health services for young children in the Triangle for 35 years, is breaking ground Friday on an expansion that will nearly triple the number of children the nonprofit can serve.
The $4.1 million project will add 18 offices to the Cary-based center, which provides psychiatric and therapeutic services every year to about 500 children younger than 12 years old. The expansion will allow the center to reach more than 1,500 children annually and add speech therapy, occupational therapy and onsite psychological testing, said psychologist Emily Odjaghian, clinical and executive director of the center.
A $900,000 seed grant obtained from federal COVID-19 funding funneled through Wake County in 2022 helped kick-start the project, Odjaghian said. At the time they received the grant, they already had an almost yearlong waitlist, she said.
“And wow … the children’s mental health crisis kind of exploded at that point,” she said…