Family Advocate P/T

Make a bigger difference

WORKING WITH US

At The Jewish Board, we dont just make a difference – we make a bigger difference As we serve 45,000 New Yorkers every year. Join our dedicated team thats been helping communities across New York City for almost 150 years and see just how big of a difference you can make.

IF YOU JOIN US, YOULL HAVE THESE GREAT BENEFITS:

• Generous vacation time, in addition to paid agency holidays and sick days
• Affordable and high-quality medical/dental/vision plans
• Tuition assistance and educational loan forgiveness
• Free continuing education opportunities
• 403(b) retirement benefits and a pension
• Flexible spending accounts for health and transportation
• 24/7 Accessible Employee Assistance Program
• Life and disability insurance
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion working groups that are available for you to join, including Confronting Structural Racism (COR), Coalition Against Anti-Semitism (CAAS), and the LGBTQ Steering Committee

ABOUT THE JOB

Youth Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) services are focused on improving or ameliorating the significant functional impairments and sever symptomatology experienced by youth due to mental illness or serious emotional disturbance. Clinical and rehabilitative interventions are also focused on enhancing family functioning to foster health/wellbeing, stability and re-integration for youth who are returning home after residential treatment or in-patient hospitalization. The Youth ACT Team is a multi-disciplinary team and works together to provide family-driven, youth-guided and developmentally appropriate services to comprehensively address the needs of youth within the family, school, medical, behavioral, psychosocial and community domains.

The Youth ACT Family Peer Advocate works as part of a multi-disciplinary team to provide treatment and support services to families and children, ages 10 to 21, who have significant behavioral health needs and who are at risk of entering, or returning home from high end services, such as inpatient settings or residential services. The role involves providing highly-individualized services focused on clinical treatment, family psychoeducation and skills development. The Family Peer Advocate provides services to youth and families in their homes and communities and collaborates closely with other service providers and systems with which the family interacts. The role will require some evening availability and rotating on-call coverage.

KEY RESPONSIBILITY INCLUDES:

• Provide linkages to community resources and supports to help child/youth live in the community, transition home from higher levels of care and meet their personal goals
• Responsible for ensuring that services and supports in the educational, vocational and benefit domains are identified and addressed.
• Engage and assisting the child/youth and family in defining their desired goals and the action steps by which to achieve them.
• Actively participate and function as part of a multi-disciplinary team providing services, as a unit, to youth and families a minimum of 6 times monthly
• Assisting children/youth and families to obtain needed medical, social, psychosocial, educational, financial, vocational, housing and other services
• Establish collaborative working relationships and acts as a liaison with community providers, Managed Care Plans, schools, and medical providers
• Completes casework documentation and collects and reports data, as required, while adhering to productivity standards
• Foster relationship with community providers to ensure that recipients are connected with appropriate services as they transition back into the community and to share or collect collateral information;
• Appointment navigation by accompanying to appointments-including but not limited to travel training, reengagement in community care, and ability to identify needs and barriers to services as well as making appropriate referrals
• Monitor, evaluate and record participant progress with respect to care plan goals;
• Educate about self-help techniques and self-help group processes.
• Provide psychoeducation to family members, caregivers or social supports
• Providing individual or group parent skill development related to the behavioral health needs of the child/youth
• Teach effective coping strategies based on personal experience and assist in the development of community support systems and networks
• Support families, parents/caregivers in developing skills to effectively manage their child/youth behaviors and navigate the multiple systems involved

• Maintain professional behaviors and ethical standards as established by licensing board, relevant professional association and the Jewish Board policies and procedures.

• Using an electronic database, document demographic data on all individuals seen, document and track familys goals, and all services provided to parent/caregiver; participates in quality improvement activities.
• Perform these services in the familys home, youths home, community, office
• Attend scheduled Youth ACT Team staff meeting 4 times weekly
• Attend mandatory Youth ACT trainings
• Any additional duties assigned.

EDUCATIONAL & TRAINING REQUIREMENTS:

• Bachelors Degree strongly preferred; High School diploma required
• Credentialing in advocacy – must obtain their provisional credentialing within 6 months and become fully credentialed.
• Lived experience in parenting a child or adolescent with a serious emotional disturbance and/or lived experience of mental health challenges.
• Ability to work with diverse social, cultural, economic groups
• Background in advocating mental health and/or in the educational system
• Bilingual in Spanish/English a plus

CORE COMPETENCIES for the position include:

• Knowledge of mental illness, serious emotional disturbance and substance use disorders.
• Critical thinking and problem solving
• Team player who functions well in a multi-disciplinary team environment
• Delivers services that are trauma-informed and attend to cultural considerations and incorporate an anti-oppressive lens
• Proactive in terms of therapeutic interventions, continuous monitoring and engagement efforts
• Commitment to building and strengthening therapeutic and family relationships across all interactions
• Identifies and builds on individual, family and community strengths; empowers youth and families
• Ability to develop, evaluate, implement and modify a clinical treatment plan/interventions to meet the needs of individual youth and families with a focus on achievable outcomes
• Ability to document assessments, plans and interventions

COMPUTER SKILLS REQUIRED:

Prior experience with electronic health records and Microsoft Office

VISUAL AND MANUAL DEXTERITY:

The candidate is able to read paper and electronic documents and perform significant data entry into various computer programs. Manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination to travel independently using public transportation.

WORK ENVIRONMENT / PHYSICAL EFFORT:

• The majority of services are provided in the community, with less time spent in office-based work.
• While the offices of the Jewish Board are accessible in accordance with the ADA, the sites to which staff may need to travel may or may not be accessible
• To perform the essential functions of this job the candidate must be able to travel within New York City carrying equipment such as a notebook, forms, laptop, mobile hotspot and cell phone weighing up to approximately 10 pounds
• To perform the essential functions of this job, the candidate is routinely required to sit (60% of the time) and stand (20% of the time), and travel to and from appointments using public or private transportation options (20% of the time)

• Frequent travel throughout the assigned borough (Bronx or Queens); infrequent travel throughout NYC

EXPERIENCE REQUIRED / LANGUAGE PREFERENCE

• Bilingual Spanish/English Preferred

We respect diversity and accordingly are an equal opportunity employer that does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, national origin, alienage, citizenship status, age, disability, sex, gender, gender identity or expression (including transgender status), sexual orientation, marital status, partnership status, veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

This applies with respect to recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, transfer, training, compensation, termination, assignments, benefits, employee activities, access to facilities and programs, and all other terms and condition of employment as well as general treatment during employment.

We will endeavor to make a reasonable accommodation to the known physical or mental limitations of qualified employees with disabilities, without regard to any protected classifications, unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of our business. Any employees who need assistance to perform their job duties because of a physical or mental condition should contact human resources.

Other details

• Job Family Direct Care [200s]
• Job Function Social Workers
• Pay Type Hourly
• Employment Indicator 8857 – Case Worker – Social Services – Traveling
• Travel Required Yes
• Required Education High School

Minimum Salary: 16
Maximum Salary: 17
Salary Unit: Yearly