Guidelines for the NYWE Advisory Committee

The NYWE was established with the mission of improving employment opportunities for NYC’s adults recovering from a mental illness. This mission is advanced by providing a variety of assistance to existing provider agencies and programs, clinical as well as vocational.

This assistance takes many forms and includes: education of program staff on interventions proven effective in helping individuals secure competitive jobs; technical assistance to stimulate an organizational culture supportive of vocational services; directories of programs offering vocational services and other employment-related resources; using seed money to sponsor preferred best practices interventions; education of employers about the benefits of employing the recovering mentally ill, etc.

These interventions, and others yet to be identified, will be most successful with the presence of an informed, active Advisory Committee, a Committee equipped to set priorities on the use of the NYWE’s finite resources. The Committee can best discharge these responsibilities if proper attention is paid to the composition of the board (numbers, areas of expertise) and lines of authority and communications channels between the Committee, the NYWE director and the senior staff at the Coalition of Voluntary Mental Health Agencies — NYWE’s parent organization.

Committee composition — partial list

Schedule

The Committee will meet every 2 months or as needed.

The year’s first meeting will be devoted to developing a one-year plan of action that details the year’s priorities, initiatives and projects.

Each subsequent meeting should make time for a progress report from the NYWE Director.

In this role they provide extra eyes and ears for the NYWE staff to remain on the cutting edge of the employment field, which in turn flows to better training and technical assistance for NYWE clients.

It is also anticipated that from time to time the Committee will develop working groups or task-oriented sub-committees to address immediate informational or programming needs — to which sub-committees additional external individuals may be added.