Care Coordinator - OEC

Description

Child First Job Description

Care Coordinator

The Child First model is an evidence-based, two-generation intervention that works with very vulnerable young children (prenatal through age 5 years) and their families, providing intensive, home-based services to decrease the incidence of 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 (HHS) under the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program and rated “Effective” by the National Registry for Effective Programs and Practice (NREPP) of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA).

Child First is currently in a period of rapid growth, with affiliate sites throughout Connecticut, in Florida, and in North Carolina. The Child First National Program Office (NPO) in Connecticut oversees and supports the local affiliate agencies.

Summary of Position

The Care Coordinator partners with a licensed Mental Health and Developmental Clinician to engage families who are referred to the Child First home-based intervention.  The Care Coordinator plays a crucial role in stabilizing the entire family system, while the Clinician provides psychotherapeutic caregiver-child intervention to facilitate and enhance this critical relationship.  Working together, the assigned Care Coordinator and Clinician make up one of up to four Clinical Teams who report to the same Clinical Director within [ENTER AGENCY NAME].  The Care Coordinator takes the lead in connecting the child and family with desired, community-based services and supports while maintaining Child First’s reflective, relationship-based stance.  The Care Coordinator also 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.  Ultimately, through connecting to family resources, the Care Coordinator both decreases the “toxic” stress in the home environment and enhances opportunities for optimal child development, thereby promoting healthy brain development for infants and young children.

Key Job Responsibilities

• Provide community resource expertise to Child First team and families, including identifying and collaborating with community-based service providers and supports.
• Engage with the Child First family and the 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 crisis situations by assisting Child First family 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, in order to understand his/her motivation, needs, and possible barriers to new services and supports.

• Collaborate closely with Child First Clinician to meet the needs of Child First families.

• Embrace use of videotaping to enhance both 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 Clinical Director.
• Engage actively in all aspects of the Child First Learning Collaborative, including in-person trainings, distance learning curriculum, and specialty trainings.
• Track completion of all assessments and enter into the appropriate database.

• Keep all appropriate documentation for clinical accountability and reimbursement.
• Participate in other clinical and administrative activities as appropriate.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in child development, psychology, nursing, human services, or related field.
• A minimum of three years working with culturally diverse families and young children under the

age of six years.

• Openness to learning, capacity for self-reflection, and eagerness to participate in reflective clinical supervision.
• Knowledge of early childhood development, parent education, parent-child relationships, and

individual, family, and community-level risk factors (e.g., poverty, homelessness, maternal depression, domestic violence, substance abuse, teen parenthood).

• Knowledge of and experience with community-based services and supports in service area, highly valued.
• Experience working in home and community-based settings with vulnerable populations of

diverse cultures and ethnicities.

• Able to speak a second language (Spanish, Portuguese, Creole, other), highly valued.
• Strong commitment to the vision, mission, and goals of Child First.
• Highly organized, self-motivated, reliable, and flexible (including willingness to work non-

traditional hours, including at least one evening).

• Eager and able to work as part of a team.

• Able to communicate well verbally and in writing.
• Comfortable with computers and experienced with Word and Excel.
• Reliable vehicle and appropriate insurance for home visits.

See above 

Salary : $27 - $29