By Dan Scanlan

A new center to help children with serious illnesses is now under construction at Mandarin’s Community Hospice & Palliative Care headquarters on Sunbeam Road.

Ground was broken Tuesday on the 8,300-square-foot Dorion Family Pediatric Center, which will fhelp children deal with complex medical conditions, as well as help their families work through their deaths.

The hospice foundation has raised just over $6.6 million of the $10 million cost for a facility named after Dottie Dorion, one of the early founding members of what was known as Hospice of Northeast Florida.

As of 2023, statistics show that hospice’s Community PedsCare staff worked with an average 266 pediatric patients a day with serious illnesses.

“PedsCare currently does not have a dedicated space that is pediatric friendly or exclusively for the program. This limits some of the therapies and activities that can be offered,” the center said. “Over the past year, our child life therapy team logged more than 900 hours driving to patients’ homes. The Dorion Center will help reduce these hours so that more time can be dedicated to patient care. In addition, it will give families a choice about where to receive care.“

Read the original article here: https://jaxtoday.org/2025/02/05/pediatric-center-coming-to-palliative-care-facility-in-mandarin/