The Story of High Spirit

Three families with special needs young adult children have been working for the past two and a half years to create a community to provide lifelong care for their children and the children of others. This High Spirit web site attempts to share with others our dreams, our values and our progress to date. We welcome and encourage the suggestions and support of all who would like to help us make these dreams into reality.

We three families live in the Boston area and therefore plan to create this therapeutic community in Massachusetts. We have found in Great Barrington an area of great support where similar facilities already exist. We hope to create a community of three homes, which would provide residence for 12 special needs young adults. We also hope to provide a day respite program for individuals with special needs who live in the area and can be served by regular participating in our social and work activities. We hope that this day participation will eventually will serve 30 – 60 disabled young adults. In the writing on this web site we refer to the participants as “residents” and “day participants”. Sometimes it is awkward to include both terms in the writing so “residents” is used alone but is intended to include both kinds of participants.

The three families are all very familiar with the Camphill Movement, which has established remarkable communities worldwide for the inclusion of mentally disabled individuals. We are beginning High Spirit with the desire and commitment to create a community on the Camphill model with of comparable high quality and philosophy