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I would like to tell you about one of the newest programs of the Baltic Street Mental Health Board. It is the Bronx Peer Advocacy Center; it is funded by reinvestment money given to us by the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Alcoholism Services. This program recently opened its building on the success of the Brooklyn Peer Advocacy Center. It serves recipients of mental health services in the Bronx. We have a trained cadre of peer advocates and group facilitators; we foresee them going from agency to agency, hospital to hospital and anywhere recipients are being served on an out patient basis and offering them from a wide menu of services our help.

Some of the things we can help with are entitlement counseling on a myriad of benefits, including social security, Medicaid, public assistance, legal issues, housing referrals, and many other services that help people maintain themselves in the community. We also provide self-help and mutual support groups run by peers for peers. We hope to help educate both our peers and other people involved in the system about how the Bronx Peer Advocacy Center can help our brothers and sisters in the mental health system regain and maintain a sense of dignity and empowerment and help themselves to a better future.

We are now located in all boroughs except Queens, and we hope to help as many recipients of mental health services as we possibly can with our advocacy employment and housing service. The new number of our Bronx Peer Advocacy Center: it is (718) 562-6712; you can speak to program coordinator Paul Chipkin to arrange for our peer advocates to make a presentation at your agency.