The planning and organization of agency responsibility is generally assumed by the director and specific referrals discussed before assignment by the administrative assistant.

The administration office develops and maintains an on-going network with other EI agencies in referring EI families for services. That is, FAIR arranges for the service coordinators to supervise new cases and, in return, service these families with evaluations and therapy.

The agency maintains a pool of providers to fulfill the skills needed to evaluate and provide therapy for new referrals in the following disciplines; Special Education, Social Work, Speech and Language, Physical and Occupational Therapy.

Subject to monthly changes, the number of specialists are approximately as follows: 15 Special Educators, 5 Social Workers, 9 Speech and Language Specialists, 4 Physical Therapists and 2 Occupational Therapists.

FAIR providers are collectively serving approximately 100 children, each with therapies averaging three hours weekly. They are required to submit written reports for each of these home-based visits that are in turn reviewed by FAIR for documentation as well as invoices, payments and referrals to Service Coordinators, as well as for record keeping and use by the Early Intervention Office Designate (EIOD) for the Bronx and Manhattan.

All FAIR evaluations are conducted in the home: Special Education to learn about the child's cognitive problems; Social Work to gain a perspective of the family and circumstances of its members in both helping and hindering the child's growth and development; Speech and Language to gain an insight into a large aspect of the child's oral and aural problems; Physical and Occupational evaluations to assess the child's general and fine motor skills.

Therapy is assigned to the extent reports specify, the EIOD identifies and the parent agrees with these evaluations.
 

Mannie L. Wilson Towers HDFC (the former Sydenham Hospital) was converted in 1987, into 101 subsidized apartments for low-income senior citizens and the handicapped. The 10-story complex at 565 Manhattan Avenue in Central Harlem, provides high quality, affordable housing for a group of people with special needs-the elderly and the handicapped, with rents structured under the Section 8 program, insuring that tenants do not pay more than 30% of their income on rent. The development is also a congregate care site for Visiting Nurse Service of New York.

Four years ago, Columbia University’s School of Dental and Oral Surgery, the Harlem Hospital Center Departments of Medicine & Dentistry, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, established a partnership to develop programs for the elderly residing in Section 202 developments.

The Mannie L. Wilson Primary Care Facility is housed in the basement of Mannie L. Wilson Tower HDFC. The project was built in a section 202 development and is the first of its kind in the country.

The facility provides comprehensive dental, medical and social services geared to the elderly and their families. In addition to diagnosis and treatment, the staff provide health promotion/disease prevention programs, substance abuse programs and health education.

West Harlem Group Assistance, Inc. (WHGA) applied $25,000 of its $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s New Approach Anti-Drug Program to establish this Neighborhood Networks Center at Mannie L. Wilson Towers.

Mannie L. Wilson Towers Neighborhood Networks Center (“MWNNC”) is a Telehealth model project in partnership with the Primary Health Care Facility, that uses Internet-based technology to bring health information, education and health services, through an interactive broadband system structured around barriers to health care for the elderly.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development launched Neighborhood Networks, as an initiative of HUD’s Office of Multifamily Housing, which encourages the development of computer learning centers to provide education and information to residents of HUD-insured and/or-assisted housing. National attention is currently being focused on using telehealth to better serve senior citizens in historically underserved low-income communities.

MWNNC will be connected by high resolution video streaming over the Internet geared for distribution to other Section 202 developments. This method has many advantages on the learning process as compared to video conferencing systems.

According to the business plan submitted to HUD, MWNNC is the first Neighborhood Networks Center in New York City to address elderly issues, specifically, the development and design of medical information from workshops on health education, and wellness programs for seniors, including yoga, aerobics and mediation. The program serves as an information exchange of health needs verses cultural differences (e.g. “home remedies” and “ Bush medicine”), and providing information on the health care process for elder caretakers. The MWNNC will develop Web sites with culturally and literacy-level sensitive information on health issues of interest to the Latino and African-American elder population.
 

Riverside Drive (west), 155th Street (north), Bradhurst Avenue (east), and 134th Street (south) bound the target area, located within the 30th Police Precinct.

The overall proactive crime fighting strategy is combined with multi-agency task force initiatives, in which local and Federal law enforcement agencies pool resources, first, to infiltrate organizations that promote violent and/or drug-related crime in the neighborhood, and, second, to initiate strategic and coordinated mass arrests to break up these organizations, and sustain a proactive police presence over the baseline services of the New York City Police Department.

The second component is enhancing the investigation and prosecution of drug-related crime. The New York County District Attorney, and the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor are the lead agencies in this effort.

The third activity is to enhance the security of the neighborhood. The acquisition, installation and maintenance of enhanced lighting, and fixed-mounted video cameras through environmental design, provides a psychological effect of "a sense of security", and enhances both surveillance and intelligence use.

The final component of the program is the development of interagency crime fighting activities, including, the establishment of Neighborhood Networks Centers that will provide education and job training provision components of Workforce Investment Act efforts, Demand Reduction Program, and other activities.
 

Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Program West Harlem Group Assistance, Inc. is a participant in the Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Program designed by the City of New York's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), New York City Housing Partnership and the Enterprise Foundation for the purposes of rehabilitating city-owned buildings and transferring them to local companies to own and manage over long term. Buildings currently owned by HPD will be reinvested back into the community through various programs. The Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Program (NEP) is one of the programs.

NYC Housing Partnership identifies locally based not-for-profit groups like West Harlem Group Assistance, Inc. to work with building clusters in the NEP Program. West Harlem Group Assistance attends program meetings with tenants and meets individually with tenants to survey tenants income, family composition, special needs with respect to temporary or permanent relocation or needs for other services. The information given on these surveys is extremely important in determining the size of apartment needed and the subsidy the tenant will need. West Harlem Group Assistance, Inc. also informs tenants of Employment Programs that can help link tenants with jobs that are being created through Workforce Development.