Kay Dale
Partners in Excellence, a local center for autism, helps children reach milestones that would have taken much longer without help. The center helps through real-life situations and gives children life skills, such as facial recognition and vocabulary. Former employee Kay Dale laughs at her favorite memory of when a child she had been working with finally placed name to face and said goodbye to Kay… on Kay’s last day working at the center.
Transcript
Location: 901 Caledonia St.
Kay Dale: Partners in Excellence is just off of Caledonia Street. At Partners in Excellence, we provide ABA services like play therapy for kids with autism, where we build their functional communication skills and teach them about social interactions and what is and is not okay. Seeing personally how quickly some of these kids have picked up concepts, laughing and smiling, and the impact it’s had on the lives of the parents to be able to watch their kids gain skills that they otherwise wouldn’t have for several years—it’s a really amazing thing to be a part of.
I had this one little guy who I thought, ‘this kid is gonna hate me forever.’ And it was a rough first session. As I got to know him, it became easier and easier to pair with him. By the time that I had my last day there, he actually made me cry because one of the things we were working on with him was recognizing faces and putting names to faces kinda because he would recognize people, but he would not necessarily address them. But then on my very last day I said ‘Bye!’ and I said his name so he knew I was talking to him and he said “Bye, Kay!”.
*Kay laughing* Full meltdown as I was walking out the door, but it honestly, it made my day, and he was one of those kids that I was there right when he hit that point in the learning curve where everything just started falling into place, and he had grown his vocabulary so much in the time I was there so, that was really, really neat to see. My name’s Kay Dale, and Partners had a huge impact on my life