Family Foundation School - Congressional Hearings

Congressional Hearings

The Family Foundation School was one of several residential programs for special-needs adolescents that were discussed in United States Congress Committee on Education and Labor hearings in 2007 and 2008. In testimony at an April 24, 2008 committee hearing, a former student testified that during the period 1995 through 1997 members of the school's faculty had engaged in various forms of physical and verbal abuse, imposed forced labor, and used inhumane forms of physical restraint.

The school responded by stating "We will not dispute his testimony. His experiences are his own and will always remain so, regardless of anything anyone says or does. Rather, we wish to unequivocally state: we deeply regret that anyone who has come through our program feels in any way damaged by their experience." The school also declared support for the efforts of the committee to keep children safe from harm, adding that the school had since modified its crisis-management methods to meet the standards of both the New York State Department of Education and the Therapeutic Crisis Intervention (TCI) program developed by Cornell University. The school also stated that since 1999, all school faculty and staff are required to be trained in Therapeutic Crisis Intervention techniques. Following the April 24 hearing, several parents of former students, a former student, and a former staff member wrote to the committee in response to the negative testimony, providing positive reports of their own experiences with the Family Foundation School.