Family Advocate

Jewish Board; New York (NY); On-site; USD 45,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

The Jewish Board invites applications for the Youth ACT Family Advocate position, joining a multidisciplinary team to support families and children aged 10 through 21 with behavioral health needs. You will advocate across the child-serving system, provide psychoeducation, and coordinate services in homes, schools, and community settings.

Strong communication and teamwork are essential as you educate families, help develop coping strategies, document progress, and participate in trainings,

Qualifications

• High School Diploma or Equivalency.
• Specialty credentialing in advocacy – can be obtained during probationary period.
• 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 a diverse population ie: social, cultural, economic group.
• Background in advocating mental health and/or in the educational system.

Responsibilities

• Provide advocacy with providers across the child serving system to raise awareness, reduce stigma, engage families in and coordinate services.
• 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 development of community support systems involved.
• Work to identify formal services and informal resources for families that are culturally affirming who are experiencing social-emotional, behavioral, or mental health challenges.
• Assist families with identifying the challenges they face, their strengths and areas of improvement/goals.
• Monitor and document family progress to track progress in accordance with agency and regulatory bodies policies.
• Participate in multi-disciplinary team meetings, staff meetings, trainings, and supervision.
• Maintain professional behaviors and ethical standards are 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 a track family’s goals and all service provided.
• Perform these services in the family’s home, youth’s home, community, office

Skills

Verbal and written communication

Independent and team work

Education

High School Diploma

Advocacy credential (during probation)

Lived experience with mental health challenges

Tools

Electronic Health Records

Microsoft Office

Job description

For nearly 150 years, The Jewish Board has been delivering innovative, best-in-class mental and behavioral health services. We are unique in serving everyone from infants and their families, to children, teens, and adults. That adds up to countless opportunities to use your skills, training, and compassion to make a difference in the lives of over 45,000 New Yorkers each year.

Purpose

Youth Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) services focuses’ 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 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

Position Overview

The Youth ACT Family Advocate works as part of a multi-disciplinary team to provide treatment and support services to families and children ages 10 through 21, who have significant behavioral health needs and who are at risk of entering or returning home from high-end

Key Essential Functions

• Provide advocacy with providers across the child serving system to raise awareness, reduce stigma, engage families in and coordinate services
• 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 development of community support systems involved
• Work to identify formal services and informal resources for families that are culturally affirming who are experiencing social-emotional, behavioral, or mental health challenges
• Assist families with identifying the challenges they face, their strengths and areas of improvement/goals
• Monitor and document family progress to track progress in accordance with agency and regulatory bodies policies
• Participate in multi-disciplinary team meetings, staff meetings, trainings, and supervision
• Maintain professional behaviors and ethical standards are established by licensing board, relevant professional association and the Jewish Board policies and procedures
• Using an electronic database, document demographic data on all individuals see, document an track family’s goals and all service provided
• Perform these services in the family’s home, youth’s home, community, office

CORE COMPETENCIES for the position include

• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to work independently as well as with a team

Educational/Training Required

• High School Diploma or Equivalency
• Specialty credentialing in advocacy – can be obtained during probationary period
• 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 a diverse population ie: social, cultural, economic group
• Background in advocating mental health and/or in the educational system

Experience Required/Language Preference

Bilingual Preferred ie: Spanish

Computer Skills Required

• Prior experience with electronic health records and Microsoft office

Visual and Manual Dexierity

• The Candidate can 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

Most 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 the staff may need to travel may or may not be accessible.

To Perform the essential functions of this job candidate must be able to travel with NYC 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 transportation options (20% of the time)

Frequent travel throughout the assigned borough ie Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx; infrequent ravel throughout NYC

The Jewish Board delivers innovative, high-quality, and compassionate mental health and social services to over 45,000 New Yorkers each year. We are unique in serving everyone from infants and their families to children, teens, and adults. We are proud to employ and serve people of all religions, races, cultural backgrounds, gender expressions, and sexual orientations. We are committed to building diverse, equitable, and inclusive teams to help support our mission, and we strongly encourage candidates from historically marginalized backgrounds to apply to work with us.

Our Values.

Our values help guide us in everything we do, from our relationships with fellow staff to the clients and communities we serve.

Treat every person
with dignity

We act with respect and caring towards our clients, colleagues, and communities.

Strive to
be outstanding

We are exceptional professionals in all that we do.

Embrace each
other’s differences

We create a fair and inclusive environment for all.

We heal our communities one person at a time through thoughtful collaboration.

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.