Founded in 1959, in Middletown, New York by the Isaacs Family, Crystal Run
Village first operated as a summer camp and then as a private residential
school for developmentally disabled children. Today, Crystal Run Village,
Inc. programs serve more than 700 people with developmental and
psychological disabilities and their families, in three counties in New
York’s Mid-Hudson and Catskill regions. Crystal Run Village, Inc. with an
operating budget of $37-million, employs approximately 800 employees to
carry out its mission of providing services for the integration and
empowerment of people with disabilities.
Expansion of Crystal Run Village began soon after the 1972 expose of the
unacceptable living conditions that people with disabilities were faced
with at institutions like Willowbrook. The Isaacs purchased and renovated
a former Catskill resort, the Flagler Hotel in Fallsburg, in anticipation
of the deinstitutionalization of people with developmental disabilities.
On December 27, 1973, approximately 150 developmentally disabled adults
arrived on three busses at the renovated Fallsburg Campus. The individuals
came from huge institutions like Letchworth and Wassaic. Some who came
from private schools like Devereaux and Greenwood had been living
temporarily on the agency’s primary campus in Middletown.
In 1979, a group of parents established the facility as a non-profit
corporation, after purchasing the school from the retiring Isaacs Family.
The children in the school grew-up, stayed, and by 1985 the agency became
a residential program primarily for adults.
In 1990 the New York Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental
Disabilities issued a call to agencies to apply for the responsibility of
providing care to people living in the bankrupt institution at Greer-Woodycrest
in Pomona, New York. As lead agency in a consortium of caregivers in
Orange and Rockland Counties, Crystal Run Village, Inc. was awarded the
contract to oversee the transition to new and vastly improved care for the
children and adults of Greer-Woodycrest.
In what has been described as an “incredible feat of skilled management
and astute provision of care,” all 108 Greer-Woodycrest people were in new
homes within two years, with 65 of the most behaviorally challenged
individuals coming to live in programs directly managed by Crystal Run
Village, Inc. The special needs of some of these long-time
institutionalized people, whose disabilities presented significant
challenges to care, resulted in the design of a unique system of
habilitation. The system evolved into the Steppingstones program.
Steppingstones
prepares people isolated for most of their lives for
community integration.
By the beginning of the year 2002, all of the people living on the three
Crystal Run Village, Inc. campuses relocated to 44 residences in
the communities of Orange, Rockland and Sullivan Counties.
In addition to
residential services, the agency offers Mental Health Services, Vocational
and Skill Development Programs, Service Coordination, Respite House and
Recreation. Most recently Crystal Run Village, Inc. has been awarded
the opportunity to open group homes for individuals living in the
community with their families. These individuals have parents who
may be getting on in years and who have become unable to care for their
children. In other instances, the young people have come of age
and have the natural desire to move on to experience a life of their
own.
