Family Support Specialist- Enhanced Family Foster Care

Job Responsibilities:

• Engage, establish, and maintain friendly, compassionate, professional working relationships with parents and foster parents. 
• Prepare parents and participate in Family Team Conferences and debrief after
• Encourage parents to participate in support services. 
• Participate in New Parent Orientation to help new parents get acquainted with the foster care system.
• Be trained as a visit coach to support the parent child relationship during Family Bonding Time.
• Supervise and assist parents in establishing structure during visits and meeting the needs of their children by utilizing hands on teaching and modeling. 
• Check-in with parents and foster parents to ensure positive communication between both. Facilitate meetings between the two as needed.
• Connect parents to community resources as needed and help develop the FFC Resource Guide
• Facilitate support groups and events that engage parents and foster parents.
• Recognize and celebrate parents when they make simple or significant progress towards reunification.
• Engage with fathers and support case planners in outreaching to absentee fathers.
• Collaborate and maintain effective communication with all FFC team members.
• Participate in Case Connection Meetings with case planning teams.
• Maintain documentation of interactions with parents and foster parents and provide updates to case planners, courts or others as needed.
• Participate in supervision and ongoing job-related training.
• Facilitate training for parents and foster parents.
• Assist parents in obtaining benefits including housing and vital documents.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in a related field verbal and written communication skills. 
• Knowledge of child and adolescent development 
• The ability to work with and engage hard-to-reach populations, as well as families impacted by trauma, poverty, complex stressors, violence, mental health, juvenile justice and substance abuse.
• Culturally competency and trauma-informed approach 
• Basic computer skills
• Ability to complete paperwork in a timely manner, flexible, willing to travel, while working well with peers
• Capable of traveling and working with families in their homes and communities. 
• Knowledge of the foster care system preferred.

Supervisory Responsibility

No

Work Environment:

Normal

Position Type/Expected Hours of Work: 21

Travel (if required): Yes

Physical Requirements: 

Other Duties:

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT 

It is the policy of Rising Ground that the Agency wholly complies with equal treatment of all employees and applicants for employment without unlawful discrimination as to an individual’s perceived or actual race, creed, color, national origin, alienate, citizenship status, gender, age, disability, marital status, partnership status, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, or veteran status in all employment decisions, including but not limited to recruitment, hiring, compensation, training and apprenticeship, promotion, upgrading, demotion, downgrading, transfer, layoff and termination and all other terms and conditions of employment.