St. Mary's Home for Disabled Children

"A Special Place for Special Children"

ABOUT US

About Us

“Home” is in Our Name for Good Reason

St. Mary’s Home for Disabled Children in Norfolk is a special place full of love and laughter, where children and young adults from all across Virginia live, play, go to school and receive complex, professional, around-the-clock care in a nurturing, comfortable environment to help them achieve their fullest potential.

Jahmari takes a break in the Early Intervention Program classroom. St. Mary’s Home is Virginia’s largest long-term pediatric residential care facility dedicated exclusively to children with severe physical and intellectual disabilities and one of only about 100 facilities of its kind nationwide. Staff provide medical, therapeutic, educational and recreational services for as many as 92 children and young adults, ages newborn to 21 years.

SMHDC has a long history of caring for Virginia’s most vulnerable children. The Home opened on Dec. 8, 1944, as an infant home for children who had no homes of their own or needed a temporary place to stay while their mothers were at work in war plants. The sisters of the order of the Daughters of Wisdom began caring for the children in 1946.

The Home expanded its mission over the years and by the 1980s had evolved into a private, nonprofit, nonsectarian organization. On Feb. 11, 2005, the children moved into an 88,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility, one of a few buildings of its kind nationwide designed and built exclusively for providing quality care in a home-like environment for children with severe disabilities.

St.Mary's Home for Disabled Children provides comprehensive care for children and young adults with severe physical and intellectual disabilities from around the state. Find out what makes St. Mary's Home a special place for special children.

“The staff do their absolute best every single day to make the children at St. Mary’s feel that it is their home. Everything there is done from the heart. That’s why St. Mary’s can’t be replaced. It’s a matter of the heart.” - Myra Perdue, whose daughter, Amelia, lives at St. Mary’s Home for Disabled Children.