KEY Service Systems - Comprehensive community based mental retardation and autism services in Connecticut.

KEY Service Systems, Inc.

Mission

The mission of KEY Service Systems is to act as a change agent, creating opportunities that encourage growth and meaningful life choices, while assisting persons in finding home, health, friends, work and presence in their communities.

In 1989, Brian Lensick and Dennis Felty, Keystone Human Services President, were both doing presentations at the Lassaick State School in Upper New York. Brian asked Dennis to do his presentation on "Clienthood" for his executive staff in Hartford. Dennis agreed and did the presentation the following month. At the end of the presentation several of DDS's Regional Directors approached and asked about Keystone's interest in helping with the Mansfield Dispersal.

Keystone thought long and hard about going to Connecticut and in the end said Yes! Mark Ritter was invited to serve as the CEO of the new agency and move to Hartford. Mark and his family also said yes and Mark assumed the leadership responsibilities of KEY. Mark arrived in Farmington in January of 1989 with a computer in the back seat of his car. He set up shop in a rented office sharing phone answering and secretarial services. By June, KEY had opened three Community Living Arrangements (group homes) serving eight people.

Of course, a lot of groundwork had already gone into the establishment of the new organization. During the mid 1980's Keystone Human Services, a large family of organizations serving the needs of people with disabilities, became recognized as a leader in this field.

KEY is a subsidiary corporation of Keystone Human Services and is governed by a community-based board of directors.

Since its establishment in 1989, KEY has expanded to include these services: Community Living Arrangements, Supported Living apartments, foster care placements, and provides early intervention services to families. The organization has grown from one employee to over two hundred and fifty, and is still growing. Throughout its expansion, administrative costs have been kept low.

The agency is run in Suite 220 at 270 Farmington Ave., in Farmington. Known in the field as "a good place to work", KEY Service Systems, Inc. has built a reputation for finding, training and promoting quality staff. According to Mark Ritter, this isn't something that happened by chance. "Good people are attracted to KEY because we have a vision of a future that offers them opportunities for real advancement."

Mark's vision of the future is based on the blueprint of the present. Mark came to Connecticut with a set of policies and procedures that has been tested by use and that required only minimal adaptations to conditions in Connecticut. Employees receive intensive and ongoing training in these procedures, which Mark describes as "setting parameters, which allow broad discretion within these limits". Each program director runs his or her program, with full responsibility for hiring new employees and administering the program budget, and taking a lead role in program development.

Reacting to Connecticut's fiscal crunch, Mark draws on his experience in Pennsylvania while that state was undergoing a long recessionary slide accompanied by shrinking human services resources. "We became innovative out of the same kind of necessity that Connecticut is now facing." In Mark's vision, that necessary innovation can be best fostered by developing a Connecticut family of service organizations, each one small enough to maintain its focus, all part of a larger network that can share economies of scale and can build on successful models.