The classroom inside Glory To God Pediatric Extended Care Facility in Miami looks like your typical classroom, but it is far from ordinary.
“It’s a school for unique abilities,” Bernadette Horvath said. “It’s incredible because this is the first one in South Florida.”
Bernadette Horvath’s daughter, Abella, is a student.
“I would have never thought, you would have asked me this couple of years ago, ‘is your daughter gonna go ever school?'” she said, “It feels so good to put that uniform on for my daughter.”
In addition to schooling, the kids get extensive medical care, physical therapy, and behavioral therapy. Horvath says having a safe place to drop her daughter off has given her back freedom.
“Allowed me to go back to school, allowed me to get a career, allowed me to create my own passion in life,” she said.”The center, is the reason, one of the big part of the reason I am in the field of helping families and working with children with special needs and their families.”
Center stays open during the holidays
The holidays are here, which means school is out. While that’s good news for most, for parents with medically fragile children, it can prove to be a challenge.
The center kept their doors open through the COVID-19 pandemic, and keeps them open when regular schools are on break for summer and the holidays.
“It’s a gift,” Tangela Moore said. “Because a lot of things I need to do before the holidays. One is in a wheelchair, the other one has Down syndrome, running everywhere through the store. It’s just a blessing to have them to help and they be in a safe place.”
And no kid goes home empty handed. They gave out turkeys for Thanksgiving, and the City of Miami Police Department gave out Christmas gifts.
“It is pretty much all sponsored by Medicaid or children’s medical services,” Assistant Administrator Barbara Goodman said. “The amount of actual money that it would take to care for children that require skilled nursing and all the therapies, there’s just not enough money for anybody individually to be able to provide for their kids.”
Goodman says she knows the program is invaluable. The center’s founder, Robert, was her own daughter’s physical therapist before he opened the program in 2017.
“That’s how I got involved with Glory to God PPEC,” Goodman said.”I call this God’s work.”
This center in Miami is seeing an increase in demand. So much so that a new center will be opening in Broward County in January.
