The UW C.A.R.E.S. Vision Council is a collaboration between social service agencies, organizations, and institutions serving the HIV positive and high-risk populations in Essex and West Hudson. The main goal of the Council is to improve the quality of life for people living with HIV/AIDS, to prevent the spread of the disease, and to develop a collaborative delivery system to provide holistic services.

All Vision Council members will work together to achieve the following long and short-term goals and activities for 2003/2004:

1. Reduce the rate of spreading the HIV virus among the Essex County population.
2. To provide HIV/AIDS education and awareness to consumers, social service agencies, and the general public.
3. To coordinate the effort to improve the quality of life for residents living with HIV/AIDS.
4. To expand local capacity of the agencies involved including use of information technology, evaluation and measurement tools, computer software applications, and access to current trends in HIV prevention, care and treatment, and support services.
5. To reduce the stigma of AIDS.
6. To increase funds from outside sources for these purposes, with the view towards developing a collaborative delivery system that provides holistic services.

1. Identify, recruit, enroll, educate adolescents, adults, seniors who are infected and at risk for HIV infection.
2. Initiate positive behavioral changes of individuals infected or at risk.
3. Train HIV/AIDS instructors/educators/peer counselors.
4. Perform individual and group psychotherapy.
5. Provide housing and support services to HIV/AIDS individuals, mothers and children, teens and seniors.
6. Provide access to primary health care for male/female prisoners or parolees
7. Develop and use a one-page survey form to measure consumer satisfaction and behavior change as a result of this initiative.
8. Recruit additional agencies, organizations, institutions, and consumers to serve on the UW C.A.R.E.S. Vision Council.
9. Provide educational workshops and community events for members, social services agencies, organizations, institutions, consumers, and the general public throughout the year.

• Outreach, consultation, reference to proper services, testing on HIV virus, provision of educational workshops to target population at risk at facilities of Vision Council agencies on everyday basis.
• Outreach enrollment in social and educational events, peer-to-peer communication reference to services, testing, etc. of HIV+ clients on everyday basis.
• Development of awareness teams (project coordinator, youth educator, HIV+ person) to educate youth and senior citizens.
• Training of HIV/AIDS instructors and peer health educators recruited from target populations, i.e. communities (e.g. 6 one-hour Health Education /Risk Reduction workshops for 12-16 participants)
• Provision of individual and group psychotherapy and emotional support to address causes of HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, risk behavior
• Housing, counseling, case management, addiction treatment, life skills education for women with HIV/AIDS.
• Daycare service for children of HIV/AIDS women receiving services.
• Rental, utility, other support assistance for HIV/AIDS clients.
• Outreach and education of hard-to-reach, high-risk youth (homeless, runaway, street youth, homosexual, transgender and questioning youth, youth involved in prostitution and/or drug use).
• Condom (male and female) and dental dam education and distribution.
• Provision of meals, clean clothes, free laundry facilities during after-business hours for populations at risk.
• Creation of four committees; 1. Events Planning: to plan community-level events, 2. Recruitment of New Members: to recruit agencies, institutions, organizations and individuals that will help the Council with it’s mission, 3. Quality Assurance: to develop evaluation tools to measure consumer satisfaction and behavior change, 4. Fund Development: to identify and solicit additional funding for expansion of existing programs and to fill existing gaps in services.