Mental Health Counselor

St. Andrews School develops the independence, character, mind, and spirit of its students to prepare them for lives of citizenship, service, and purpose. All our students live, learn, and play in the natural beauty of our 2,200-acre campus. At the center of our community are curious, motivated, and diverse students who are accepted without regard to their families means. Each young person is challenged and valued, and students are truly known by the life-long mentors who teach, coach, and advise them. Human connection, face to face, is the foundation of our program. Friendship and joy define our spirit; faith and learning is our motto. To learn more about St. Andrews visit our website at www.standrews-de.org.

St. Andrews seeks a full-time, twelve-month mental health counselor. The counselor will report to the director of counseling to develop and implement wellness initiatives that foster student well-being and support social and emotional growth. The counselor will provide individual short-term supportive counseling and provide interventions to address a variety of mental health and learning challenges that affect adolescents, including crisis assessment. The counselor must be well versed in all areas of clinical counseling with regard to adolescent student needs, parent and professional communication, and collaboration with administration and faculty.

Essential Functions:

Responsibilities include assessing, diagnosing, and managing a large and diverse caseload of adolescents, providing ongoing psychotherapy and/or adjustment counseling, teaching a semester-long wellness course for IV formers (tenth graders), and maintaining a positive professional relationship with members of the school community. Additional duties include sharing on-call during the weeknights and weekends, reviewing psychological testing of applicants and students, training school counseling personnel when applicable, maintaining required health records for all students seen, collaborating with the schools consulting psychiatrist, associate head of school, athletic director, dean of student affairs, and the director of health services, and participating in regular administrative meetings. When needed, the counselor may coordinate referrals to mental health professionals and implement treatment recommendations.

Skills and experience:

• Five years of relevant experience providing counseling/therapy services to adolescents, ideally within an independent school setting, preferred.
• Familiarity with the boarding school setting is highly desirable.
• Knowledge of the ethical and legal considerations related to counseling practices.
• Passion for working with and living in a community with adolescents.
• Generalist in terms of counseling, prepared to deal with a variety of mental health issues such as adjustment issues, anxiety, depression, and eating disorders, among others.
• Knowledge of different therapeutic approaches, particularly cognitive behavioral therapy.
• Excellent relationship building and communication skills, both verbally and in writing.
• Effective communication with students, parents, faculty, and staff regarding mental health and social wellness; consult with parents of children with identified concerns and make recommendations for follow-up evaluation and/or treatment.
• Ensure that all required health records are maintained in the prescribed format and in a manner which retains medical confidentiality and complies with HIPAA.
• Design and deploy faculty and staff psychoeducation workshops to support and elevate student wellbeing.
• Coordinate and facilitate communication and exchange of pertinent information with outside counselors/providers.
• Provide weeknight and weekend on-call coverage for after-hours crisis management and risk assessments on a rotating basis with other counselors.
• A Masters or Doctoral degree in school counseling, social work, marriage and family counseling, mental health counseling, or professional counseling is preferred but not required.
• Must be eligible to obtain Delaware State licensure, and obtain such licensure, within one year of hire date.

This job description is intended to describe the basic, critical elements of the job and should not be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, skills, efforts or working conditions associated with the job. A thorough background check, inclusive of fingerprinting, is required as a condition of employment.