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Executive Director Message
 Mental retardation is a developmental disability that strikes one family in ten or about three percent of our population. Mental retardation is common.
Clearly, the mentally challenged comprise 70 percent of all people with developmental disabilities. People with mental retardation function with below average intelligence and are limited in at least two fundamental life skill areas. These limitations include communication, self-care, home living, social skills, community use, self-direction, health and safety, leisure, work, and academics.
There are more than 200 known causes for mental retardation. These causes include environmental factors during pregnancy, genetics, or a combination of genetic and environmental factors. However, in seventy-five percent of all cases, the cause for this life-changing condition is not known. Fortunately, the vast majority of all people with mental retardation are only mildly delayed. With proper training, education, and support, they may lead productive and happy lives.
Blessed by God, the Key Training Center is “A Place Where miracles Happen Every Day.” From humble beginnings in 1966, the Key Training Center today provides a comprehensive scope of services to people with mental retardation and other developmental disabilities. Theses services include daily living and social skills, job training, life-sustaining care and residential services. Key Training Center program participants lead richer and more dignified lives as they fulfill their potential as human beings.
Our success is possible because the Key Center benefits from an involved, faithful and committed governing board of directors and a caring community that embraces our program participants as full citizen partners. A dedicated, trained and skilled staff serves program participants with kindness, love, dignity, and respect – now a Key Training Center cornerstone.
By focusing on normal patterns, rhythms and routines, program participants develop personally, socially, and vocationally with programs tailored to individual needs. With a balanced blend of proper training, experience, and opportunities, Key Center program participants live meaningful lives.
The Key Center not only provides supervised residential services to many program participants but also promotes the integration of program participants into the social fabric of the local community. Program participants enjoy life as they live in group homes, apartments, and a 48-bed special needs complex at Key Pine Village. Some Key Center program participants own their homes.
At the not-for-profit Key Training Center, emphasis is placed on ability, not disability. Program participants blossom in a caring environment. They are accepted for their unique, positive, and valued qualities. The open and friendly atmosphere of the Key Training Center contrasts sharply with the harsh, sterile, and impersonal environment of traditional institutions where many program participants once lived.
Knowing one mentally challenged person as a friend provides tremendous insight into the concerns, hopes, and desires of these trusting people with such unassuming characters. When we accept our mentally challenged friends for who they are, we begin to understand they are more like us than we ever knew. With hands of compassion, we touch their lives when we accept them, love them, and provide them with opportunities for normal living as they are able.
The Key Training Center has established a proud tradition of providing social, educational, and residential services to people with mental retardation. With your hands of compassion and God’s many blessings, the Key Training Center continues to be “A Place Where Miracles Happen Every Day.”
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