Community Voices Podcast: Elizabeth Keller

JR- Hello and welcome to another community voices podcast

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JR-This is JR Logan with Elizabeth Keller, would you like to talk a little bit about your involvement in the community, what you do professionally, and any other volunteer activities you might have

Elizabeth- I work for Sarah inc. and Sarah has been providing services for over 50 years for people with disabilities on the shoreline, and kids steps which is the agency that I work for is a children’s division of Sarah inc. and I’ve been the director there for 6 years and we have two programs we do at kids steps one is a birth to 3 program which is an early intervention for children with special needs and we service currently about 200 children at any given time in 23 towns in Connecticut so we are considered a fairly large program. The other program we have is called the family and children center and the family and children center was created a couple years ago based on the needs of the community along the shoreline to help provide answers and work through issues they were having with their children with or without disabilities so we provide quarterly programs such as parent trainings workshops advocacy and as well as parent child groups such as baby sign, mommy and me music groups, and also just child programs such as social skills trainings, what’s nice is that we don’t turn anyone away due to failure to pay and my aspiration and mission is that we are there for the community, so if you have a child with a disability or you know somebody who has questions and you don’t know who to turn to, we are that resource.

JR- What are some of the interesting things that are developing in your field or organization that give you hope or you think is interesting?

Elizabeth- One of the biggest changes in our field is the idea of what best practices in early intervention and providing services. We used to be as early intervention as coming into the family’s home and being the expert and professionals and telling you as a parent what to do with the child that you in fact know more about than we do and now the field is looking at families as a unit and saying you know your child best, you have your routines, how can we best support them?

JR- Did you have any other thoughts about united way and we are at the Harwood institute right now about what you’re learning about here and how that applies to your work?

Elizabeth- I'm very thankful for the united way for this opportunity, I'm very passionate about working with families along the shoreline and connecting families with children with disabilities in particular, when I say shoreline I'm talking about Branford down a little ways, when people think about those communities they think about them having a lot of resources and I really appreciate the way united way listened to me and said yes we have resources but we also have needs and I could use your assistance in connecting with other organizations to help support our families and our mission so I'm grateful for that.