First-Ever Supported Education Symposium

Although the first ever Supported Education Symposium will physically be held in NYC on 5/28, parts of it will be also be live-streamed. See the information below.


Community Access will host the first Supported Education Symposium in NYC on May 28 at their offices located at 17 Battery Place in lower Manhattan.

As you may know, Supported Education helps people overcome the barriers to continuing their educations, whether they are seeking a high school diploma or an advanced degree but have challenges connected to mental health, homelessness, criminal justice involvement or other factors. Background information is provided below. Parts of the symposium will be live-streamed if that is of interest. 

Tap here if you would like to attend in-person.


Blueprint is the only free, supported education program specifically designed to serve people with lived mental health experience who are formerly (or currently) justice involved. Since beginning in 2015, Blueprint has served 255 individuals to attain their education goals.  

Blueprint is an education program in the truest sense. Unlike other programs that are focus on job placement, Blueprint helps participants set their own education goals, and supports them on their journey. 

Blueprint is a mobile program, which means that workers meet with students on their own terms, in places that work for their schedules (on campus, at home, a convenient coffee shop along the student’s commute).

Some examples of the services that Blueprint supports participants to work through include:

  • helping to arrange a class schedule that works for the students’ needs, taking into account things such as side-effects of medications; 
  • arranging to extend the curfew at a homeless shelter so a student can take evening labs or stay for extracurricular activities;
  • supporting a student to arrive early to large lecture hall classes, so as to avoid big crowds that could be triggering; and 
  • more traditional services such as time-management, accessing on-campus supports, technology training, etc. 

On May 28, Blueprint will host the first-ever Supported Education Symposium in NYC and will welcome supported education experts from Europe to discuss building out the network of programs and services in NYC and beyond.

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