Social Profiles

Overview

..Living, Learning, Working
It was a different world 60 years ago, especially for families of children with intellectual and other developmental disabilities. Not much was understood about their problems. There were few alternatives outside of full-time parental care. They were shunned by society and largely ignored by public education. And for the most part, professional assistance could only be found in institutions that were hardly more than warehouses places of little help and less hope.

But in 1949, a small group of parents came together to form AHRC, a new organization founded on the conviction that every person, regardless of their intellectual abilities, has the right to live with dignity, learn with pride and work to achieve their highest potential.

From a handful of volunteers, AHRC Suffolk (a chapter of NYSARC, Inc.) has grown to be one of the region's most trusted organizations and a leading voice on behalf of intellectually challenged children, adults and their families. Our school, day habs, community residences and on- and off-premises employment opportunities provide a comprehensive range of programs and services, delivered by an experienced caring staff. At heart, AHRC Suffolk remains very much a family ... a community of parents, teaching and health care professionals, volunteers, business partners and supporters bound by a common goal: to provide a life of opportunity for the intellectually and physically disabled. We invite you to join our community and share our vision for the future.

Are their efforts less important because they are intellectually disabled? Or do their special challenges make each accomplishment even more worthy of support?

At AHRC, we believe in the life well led. And whether that life includes special personal obstacles or is spent in service of others, what matters most is that we each treat every day as an opportunity to explore our own unique potential. Because regardless of our intellectual capacity, it is in reaching up and out that we most grow as human beings.