Family Resource Partner

Summary

The Family Resource Partner will partner with a licensed Mental Health and Developmental Clinician to engage families referred to the Child First home-based intervention. The Family Resource Partner helps stabilize the family system while the Clinician provides psychotherapeutic caregiver-child intervention to enhance this relationship. Working together, the Family Resource Partner and Clinician form one of four Clinical Teams reporting to the Clinical Director within The Children’s Home Society.

The Family Resource Partner connects the child and family with desired community-based services and supports, while maintaining Child First’s reflective, relationship-based stance. The Family Resource Partner enhances caregiver executive functioning skills (e.g., planning, organizing, managing time, focusing attention, regulating emotions, reflecting on progress) and engages in interactive play with young children in the home. Through connecting to family resources, the Family Resource Partner helps decrease toxic stress in the home and supports optimal child development for infants and young children.

The Child First model is an evidence-based, two-generation intervention that serves very vulnerable young children (prenatal through age 5 years) and their families, delivering intensive, home-based services to reduce serious mental health problems, developmental and learning disabilities, and abuse and neglect. Child First provides (1) a psychotherapeutic, dyadic intervention to strengthen the parent-child relationship, and (2) care coordination to connect the family to needed services and supports.

Child First has been recognized as an evidence-based home visiting model by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program and rated "Effective" by the National Registry for Effective Programs and Practice (NREPP) of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA).

Primary Job Functions

• Duties
• Provide community resource expertise to the Children’s Home Society team and families, including identifying and collaborating with community-based service providers and supports.
• Engage with the CHS family and Clinician in the collaborative family assessment process (i.e., use data from interviews, observations, interactions, and standardized measures to identify family strengths, needs, and challenges).
• Promote family stabilization by identifying all needed and desired services, integrating service needs into the Child and Family Plan of Care, and addressing barriers to services as they arise.
• Avert crises by assisting CHS families in times of urgent need (e.g., eviction).
• Enhance caregiver executive functioning skills (e.g., planning, organizing, managing time, focusing attention, regulating emotions, reflecting on progress) as needed and in consultation with the Clinician and Clinical Director.
• Maintain a reflective lens when engaging with the caregiver to understand motivation, needs, and possible barriers to new services and supports.
• Collaborate closely with the Clinician to meet the needs of CHS families.
• Embrace use of videotaping to enhance therapeutic work with families and reflective clinical supervision.
• Provide identified child and/or other children in the family with an interactive, growth-promoting play experience.
• Engage in weekly individual, team, and group reflective clinical supervision with the Clinical Director.
• Engage actively in all aspects of CHS’s Learning Collaborative, including in-person trainings, distance learning curriculum, and specialty trainings.
• Track completion of all assessments and enter the appropriate database.
• Keep all appropriate documentation for clinical accountability and reimbursement.
• Participate in other clinical and administrative activities as appropriate.
• Additional Responsibilities
• Contribute to a positive, engaging work environment.
• Display sensitivity to the service population’s cultural and socioeconomic characteristics.
• Strong commitment to the vision, mission, and goals of Child First.
• Demonstrate the CHS Mission, Vision, and Values in the performance of all job duties.
• Participat…