History

Lucy Daniels Center for Early Childhood History

Dedicated to helping children live emotionally healthy lives, the Lucy Daniels Center for Early Childhood has grown to be the single largest nonprofit agency provider of  mental health services exclusively for children in the Triangle region, serving more than 500 children and their families annually. Founded in 1989 with a generous start-up gift from Lucy Daniels, Ph.D., a local writer and clinical psychologist, the Lucy Daniels Center is both a community clinic, sensitive to the needs of a diverse population, and a highly sophisticated assessment and treatment facility. The Center provides assistance in specialized classrooms, outpatient clinics, and in children's homes and daycares. The Center also provides a model preschool program for typically developing children, which offers opportunities for teacher training and disseminating the Center's methods and findings through workshops and publications for parents and professionals.

After an initial year in a temporary facility, the Center moved into its specially designed combination school/clinic in 1992. Our location in western Wake County, in Cary, close to I-40, was chosen so that we would be centrally located for Wake, Durham, and Orange County families. Our first decade of service in the '90's was primarily focused on delivering our school-based programs and community and professional education. More than 10,000 parents and professionals participated in our programs during that decade.

Because of the changes in mental health delivery systems in the 90's that made it difficult for families to find and afford the careful treatments that we believed children deserve, we made the commitment to create a broad and comprehensive array of outpatient services. We launched the Family Guidance Service clinic-based program in 2001, and, in 2003, began our SecurePath partnership with Wake County SmartStart to provide in-home therapeutic services for low-income families. In the subsequent nine years, we have served about 4,500 Triangle-area children and their families, providing several therapy sessions for some, and for others, years of sustained and intensive care.

The Lucy Daniels Center is committed to helping children develop the inner capacities that will best enable them to meet life's emotional, social, and intellectual challenges. Our foundational approach is an integrative one, in which we utilize a variety of lenses. Our psychoanalytic expertise enables us to understand the perspectives of each child in depth, as well as to understand family relationships. Our knowledge of neurobiology enables us to weigh the relevance of genetic and other biological factors. Our cognitive and developmental expertise enables us to appreciate the whole child and the interplay of various aspects of children's development.

We believe that children have enormous capacities to change and grow within certain biological limits. Lucy Daniels Center educators and clinicians understand that children will overcome challenges when they feel safe, understood, and respected. Children have personal inner lives, interpret their world in individual ways, and express themselves in words and behavior in unique ways. We recognize that children influence their own development. Their desires, interpretations, and decisions about how to best achieve safety and fulfillment in the world strongly influence who they are becoming. The relationships that they establish with loved ones, their experiences in life, and their genetic heritage also affect their development.

Parents are in the strongest position to foster their children's emotional and social competencies when they most fully understand their children's perspectives, desires, and needs. We take the long view, asking what kind of assistance will best enable children to achieve success in the years to come. True change and growth takes time and sustained dedication from parents and Lucy Daniels Center professionals, and we are committed to providing that time and making the effort required to enable each child to reach their fullest potential.

 

Click here to learn more about Lucy Daniels, Ph.D., the Center's founding benefactor.

Click here to see a brief video about Lucy Daniels, Ph.D.