SARASOTA COUNTY (WFLA) — Safe Children Coalition representative and stakeholders gathered Wednesday morning for a ceremonial groundbreaking for a new youth shelter.

The new facility will be located on two acres of land along Sawyer Road. The 9,000-square-foot building will provide a safe space for kids and teens ages 10 to 17 who may be experiencing homelessness, mental health crises, or a difficult situation at home.

“Teens come to us from different ways and what we do is prevent teens from being put into foster care, so it is a preventative program,” said Jacqueline House, vice president of Development for Safe Children Coalition. “Prevention costs less than having a child in foster care and it is less traumatic than having a child in foster care. It is for community teens, it is for teens and minors who are not yet in foster care, we want to prevent that, we want to reunite them with their familes.”

The need in the region for more bed space is great.

“There are about 17 designated youth shelters throughout the state of Florida and our youth shelter is always one or two in utilization, meaning we serve more teens,” House said. “We provide more bed nights, we help about 200 teens a year coming in and out of the shelter at a time and then we also provide up to 3000 bed nights.”

On a day to day, the existing temporary youth shelter is at capacity. There are currently 12 beds and there is virtually always a waitlist.

“It has been difficult for us.” said Brena Slater, CEO and president. “We had to move into a temporary shelter that was half the size, so it has definitely been difficult to not be able to serve as many children as we used to be able to. With all of our programs, but especially our shelter for having respite beds at night, since we only have 12 beds currently, we definitely need more beds. So we are hoping this 24 bed shelter will cut our waiting list and we will be able to serve more kids.”

“It is so hard to hear that there are waitlists in a place that is as rich and vibrant as Sarasota County. I am proud to represent Sarasota, we have the best of the best here and the same should be true for children that are in need,” said Representative Fiona McFarland.

Community partners and special appropriations through the legislature have helped bring this project closer to fruition. The fundraising campaign for the new shelter has raised approximately 80% of SCC’s Phase I goal of $9 million.

“I think it is important to say thank you to the community for the support that they have provided to get this youth shelter project to this point, also to say if anyone is interested in learning more, to contact us and we will be able to talk to them about how to get involved,” said House.

“It will bring a lot of relief and it will help our community too. We want to see our children and families get better so that they can grow up and be good productive citizens in our community,” said Slater.