Community Liaison; Contra Costa

Overview

Lincoln Families is a workplace that is committed to strengths-based, culturally responsive, attachment-centered, and trauma-informed care.

POSITION: Community Liaison
PROGRAM: SEP-Contra Costa
SALARY: $58K

TEXT ‘SEP
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The Lincoln Families School Engagement Program (SEP) helps chronically truant youth and their families address barriers to attending schools and support consistent attendance and engagement in the learning process. SEP is a prevention program for youth who have increased absences but are not yet identified as chronically truant or involved in the Student Attendance Review Board (SARB) or Parent Truancy Court (PTC) system.

SEP meets youth and families where they are at, whether it be in the home, school, or community. Staff deliver services to youth and families in a variety of ways.

• Family Coaching – Providing intensive case management and collaborating with families to reconnect them to their communities, and develop skills and resources for self-sufficiency;
• Youth Counseling – Working with students to increase motivation, promote a healthy lifestyle and establish trust with the school system for achievement and success;
• Resource Navigation – Linking youth and families to self-identified supports for reducing stressors and addressing issues impacting attendance as well as working with schools to improve their outreach to families.

Our Why: Chronic truancy is a crisis impacting children in the Bay Area, throughout California, and across the county. Studies consistently show that elementary school students who miss school are more likely to struggle academically, which leads ultimately to higher drop-out rates. While there are numerous risk factors associated with absenteeism, school truancy is not an isolated problem or merely a behavioral issue.

Rather, it is the result of underlying problems associated with poverty and systemic inequities, such as homelessness and the physical and mental health of the caregiver.

POSITION SUMMARY: Reporting to the Program Manager, the Community Liaison in the School Engagement Program (SEP) will work collaboratively with the team and youth’s family to develop a comprehensive individualized plan that provides goals to assist and support the youth and family in increasing school attendance by addressing issues that have resulted in significant truancy. The Community Liaison is committed to creating a culturally competent, strengths-based, family-focused plan that meets the needs of the youth and family.

Essential Functions

• Provide case management, mental health services, and crisis intervention to assist youth with chronically truant behavior
• Provide behavioral supports to engage the youth and family in developing an individualized plan, implementing the plan and evaluating progress
• Create linkage and coordinate resources relevant to the needs of the youth and family
• Evaluate youth’s social, recreational, and life-skills functioning and caregiver needs
• Implement plan of care developed by Treatment Team
• Help youth develop and utilize their strengths, interests, and skills
• Design interventions relevant to social, recreational, and life-skills development
• Develop and maintain collaborative relationships with community resources
• Develop rapport and maintain good professional relationships with youth, family, and other significant people in the youth’s familial and social network
• Requires driving to conduct meetings at homes or other sites and may include transporting youth or families. (Community Liaison must have a valid CA driver’s license, personal automobile insurance and satisfactory driving record.)

POSITION REQUIREMENTS: Expresses a passion for working with families that are system involved. Interest and enthusiasm for ensuring services are culturally responsive. Values diversity and expresses such in contact with youth, families and colleagues. Demonstrated awareness of, sensitivity to and competence in dealing with cultural and socioeconomic diversity of client population. Practices ongoing cultural self-assessment to explore the ways they may be prejudiced, biased or ignorant towards others of a different culture.

Ability, experience, and…