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���������� is very pleased to announce that Jeff Wise, JD, Acting Executive Director, The Justice Center for the Protection of People with Special Needs will be a newly added lead off speaker at this April’s ���������� Annual Executive Seminar at the Albany Hilton. Jeff has served as a highly respected advocate for ����������ers with disabilities for over 15 years, as senior policy analyst with the Coalition for the Homeless and as CEO of the ���������� State Rehabilitation Association. Jeff has a law degree from Albany Law School.

Jeff will be joined by Jay Kiyonaga, Director of Justice Center Implementation to kickoff this year’s Seminar with an April 25 9:15-9:45 summary on how the Justice Center will “protect people with special needs from abuse, neglect and mistreatment” and assure that “the state maintains the nation’s highest standards of health, safety and dignity; and by supporting the dedicated men and women who provide services.”

See Executive Seminar program schedule details at http://www.nyaprs.org/conferences/executive-seminars/documents/ExecutiveSeminarAgenda2013.pdf and register at .

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The Justice Center will:

• Institute a single agency for the protection of vulnerable persons that will improve accountability and oversight for programs in NY

• Enforce standard definitions of abuse and neglect leading to standardized systems, reporting requirements and procedures to enable more timely resolution of incidents

• Establish a single 24/7 telephone hotline for all people to report incidents of alleged abuse and neglect, allowing ���������� to identify and act upon these reports consistently, promptly and with a high standard of quality

• Institute common standards for investigations of alleged abuse and neglect and establishes training curricula for investigators

• Establish Codes of Conduct to ensure staff who work with individuals acknowledge their responsibility to support the safety, dignity and welfare of those they serve

• Implement proportional and progressive disciplinary standards for those employees found involved in substantiated instance of abuse and neglect

• Create a centralized register of individuals found responsible for egregious or repeated acts of abuse and neglect

• Create centralized, comparable data and reporting capabilities to allow the NYJC to identify systemic issues and trends, and to identify potential risks in order to prevent abuse and neglect situations before they occur while improving the overall quality of care

• Build processes which will promote transparency, data sharing and a reduction of duplicated effort among State Oversight Agencies and the Justice Center to increase overall accountability to vulnerable persons in ����������

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