The Board of MR/DD provides services and supports to more than 8,000 boys and girls and men and women in Cuyahoga County. The community knows us best for our early childhood centers, schools, adult activities centers and group homes, but we’re much more than that.

Our full range of services includes everything from in-home early intervention programs for very young children and their families to leisure programs for seniors. Much of what we do goes beyond the walls of our own centers and homes and takes place in the community, where we encourage individuals with mental retardation and other developmental disabilities to live, learn, work and play.

The cornerstone of our philosophy is self-determination and person-centered planning. Self-determination is a process that enables people with mental retardation and other developmental disabilities and their families to communicate their wants and needs to us so we can assist them in securing the supports they need for a better place in life in this community.

Person-centered planning transfers the power of decision-making from staff to individuals and their families so they can obtain only those services and supports they need and desire and those that are feasible.

We facilitate this decision making through service coordination, assisting individuals and families in identifying and acquiring the appropriate services and supports they choose for themselves within the diverse resources available in our area. Some of those services and supports may be ones that we provide, and others may be services provided by community agencies.

More than 60 percent of the funding for our annual $180+ million budget comes from a continuing 3.9-mill countywide property tax approved by voters in 2005. We expect to have to go to the voters in 2011 or 2012 to replace this tax in order to keep up with a growing enrollment and inflation. The federal Medicaid program, the Ohio Department of MR/DD and the Ohio Department of Education provide most of the rest of our income.