Welcome to Family Residences and Essential Enterprises, Inc. (FREE)

We are an organization whose philosophy is rooted in the realization of human potential.
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With Love and Gratitude, We Honor the Life Of Iris Hyman

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"What we do for ourselves, dies with us.  What we do for others and the world, remains and is immortal"  Albert Pine.                                             

FREE celebrates the life and mourns the loss of Iris Hyman, a dear friend and leader.  As a parent, advocate, friend and Officer of the FREE Board of Directors, Iris was a true inspiration and comfort to all the lives she touched.  More...                         

Fourth Annual ReelAbilities Film Festival - February 9th - 14th, 2012

Family Residences is proud to once again be a partner with ReelAbilities, the NY Disabilities Film Festival that is the largest in the country dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories and artistic expressions of people with different disabilities.  Events are scheduled throughout the five boroughs and on Long Island.  Click here to go the ReelAbilities website for more information on the movies being featured in the festival, screening times and locations.  Help us raise awareness about and increase sensitivity towards those with disabilities by supporting this great event.

 FREE Players Jazz Ensemble Performance - Reschedule Date - Saturday, February 18th

 

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The FREE Players Jazz Ensemble will be performing again on Saturday, February 18th at our 191 Bethpage-Sweethollow Road facility.  Open seating starts at 5:00 pm.  Tickets are $10.  Also appearing on this night will be Drum Line, Modern Dancers, Steam Heat, and the Flash Mob Dancers.  To order tickets, please call 516-870-1600 x4040 or email Tdarrow01@familyres.org.  We hope you can join us for another great performance!  

            

 newsday

Can-Do 'Guys and Dolls'
Enabling the disabled onstage
Opening night is still six months away, but Michael Brennan is focused on the lyrics to “Fugue for Tinhorns” as if the curtain will rise in a few hours. Flanked by two other young men in a classroom in Old Bethpage, he clutches a Daily Racing Form, a prop he’ll use in the opening number of “Guys and Dolls,” and begins to sing. “But look at Epitaph . . . he wins it by a half!”
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The Sky's the Limit

From high heels to high notes, the FREE players rise to every challenge in 'Guys and Dolls'

Barbara Sharkis' friends and family measure her development as an actress in steps - currently being taken in 3-inch heels. Sharkis is a group home resident with obsessive-compulsive disorder, one of 50 actors with various disabilities who are performing "Guys and Dolls" at the Suffolk Y Jewish Community Center in Commack. Last Saturday was opening "night", a 3 p.m. matinee before a crowd of several hundred.

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East End Houses Celebrate 30 Year Anniversary

In 1977, the year that FREE began, the original Board of Directors envisioned residential alternatives to hospitalization and immediately started to plan for this.  Although FREE was originally founded to support persons with mental illness, within the founding year, the agency expanded its vision to embrace persons with developmental disabilities.  In the fall of 1979, the dream of residential alternatives became a reality when four homes known as Pineway, Abbott, Maplewood and Eleanor opened their doors on the East End of Long Island.  Facilitated by a contract with the NYS Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, the houses were purchased as bank foreclosures and rehabilitation was done right away. The houses were designed to support three persons per house.     Once the renovations were completed, the houses were furnished with the help of NYS employees who joined with FREE staff on moving day to unload the furniture into each new home and to help prepare it for the new residents.
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