The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) announced last week that it would open three new Jobs-Plus sites, expand the seven already in operation, and bring the Connections to Care model to all ten sites.
The NYCHA press release announcing the expansion cited an Urban Institute analysis of Jobs-Plus which found that people who participated in the program for a year were 72% more likely to be employed than their peers who had not taken part. Now, 6,000 Jobs-Plus participants each year will also have access to mental health care services thanks to the expansion of Connections to Care.
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) has provided support to both Jobs-Plus and Connections to Care through grants to CBOs participating in each initiative, to BronxWorks and the Hudson Guild respectively. SNF has also made repeated grants to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, which originated Connections to Care along with the Mayor’s Office of Economic Opportunity.
SNF believes firmly in the power of public-private partnership to address societal issues, in particular the potential of harnessing existing networks and institutions to deliver added value rather than building new initiatives from scratch.