Summary

The Family Resource Partner will partner with a licensed Mental Health and Developmental Clinician to engage families who are referred to the Child First home-based intervention. The Family Resource Partner 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 Family Resource Partner and Clinician make up one of four Clinical Teams who report to the same Clinical Director within The Children’s Home Society. The Family Resource Partner 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 Family Resource Partner 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 Family Resource Partner 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.

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).

Primary Job Functions

• Duties

• Provide community resource expertise to Children’s Home Society team and families, including identifying and collaborating with community-based service providers and supports.
• Engage with the CHS 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 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 his/her motivation, needs, and possible barriers to new services and supports.
• Collaborate closely with our Clinician to meet the needs of CHS 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 CHS’ 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.

• 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.
  • Participate actively in departmental meetings, training, and education, as well as the quality process.
  • Comply with CHS’s code of conduct, policies, procedures, and other obligations.
  • Perform other duties related to department goals and projects as needed.

Competencies

Schedule Expectations

This position is a salary exempt job that will require some weekends, and evenings work. Along with working our standard scheduled week. The ability to work flexible hours is required to meet business needs. If working remotely, will be required to be available by telephone and email during specified hours as required. Frequent travel required to conduct business-related activities.

Physical Effort and Work Environment