St. Mary's Home for Disabled Children

"A Special Place for Special Children"

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St. Mary’s Home for Disabled Children
to Embrace Adult Care

St. Mary's Home has been a safe harbor for children in need since its founding as an infant home during World War II. Now, the Home is getting ready to offer adults who have severe disabilities the comprehensive and expert care for which St. Mary’s is recognized nationwide.

You can help provide a loving, secure future for adults with severe disabilities from across Virginia, including St. Mary's own graduates, who now must find other places, such as nursing homes, to live after they turn 21. The move can be difficult for the young adults and their families.

No one can describe the urgent need for the adult home at St. Mary’s better than the families themselves.

Bruce and Eileen Scherzinger have found that group homes have long waiting lists and require residents to have a large degree of self-sufficiency that is beyond the reach of their daughter, Rachel.

“An option to extend Rachel’s residency at St. Mary’s beyond age 21 would be a godsend,” Bruce Scherzinger said. “It would quite literally give her a new lease on life and a level of care that can be offered nowhere else.”

A groundbreaking ceremony is planned for Sept. 15, 2011, for a 10,000-square-foot expansion, designed by PF&A Design, with 12 private rooms.

“Embrace,” the $6 Million Campaign for St. Mary’s Home, already has raised more than half of the $3 million needed to build the expansion. The campaign also is raising $2 million to establish an endowment fund to protect against economic downturns and $1 million for annual operating costs.

The main benefactors of the adult home are St. Mary's Trustee Carl M. Albero, a founder of the defense contracting company AMSEC and vice-chairman of the Board of Directors of Colonna's Shipyard, and his wife, Carole Anne Albero, a retired special education teacher, St. Mary’s volunteer and member of St. Mary's Auxiliary Board. Other major supporters include St. Mary’s Auxiliary Board, Sentara Healthcare, Amerigroup Charitable Foundation, PACE Collaborative, Bank of America and the Napolitano Family Foundation.

For more details about the plans for the adult home and endowment fund -- and how you can help change the futures of children and young adults with severe disabilities -- click on the links below:

Or email Martha Price Stewart, director of development, or call 446-6797
or (800) 237-6555.

To donate now to help bring comfort and safety to adults with disabilities and their families, click here.

Read a Virginian-Pilot article about the plans for the adult home here.

Read an Inside Business article about the expansion here.

Read a news release about the formal announcement of the adult home here.

Read a Virginia Business magazine interview with lead donor Carl M. Albero here.

To see more artists' renderings of the adult home, click here.