Family Support Worker, Parents as Teachers

Mary's Center is committed to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within our organization and the communities we serve. We embrace diversity of experiences, ideas, and individuals, and seek to bring a diverse group of candidates to the table.

Important Note: Mary's Center is mandating the COVID-19 vaccine + booster for all staff.

The Family Support Worker ensures that each child is safe, healthy, and ready for school by age five by providing intensive home visiting services to overburdened parents. Overall responsibilities include:

• Providing weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly home visits.
• Performing developmental screens on infants up to age five
• Tracking well-baby visits and immunizations
• Strengthening parent-child interaction
• Facilitating access to community resources for example: education, housing, and childcare.

Reportability

This position will report directly to the Parents as Teachers Program Manager.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily.

Assessment:

• Collaborates with referring providers to review questions concerning the Intake Summary.
• Identifies and articulates critical issues confronting the family and uses as a basis in creating the Family Goal Plan (FGP).
• Builds on family strengths to meet participant needs and/or respond to crisis and stress.
• Collaborates with Program Manager to determine level of family functioning and growth as it relates to the service levels.

Build Relationship with Family:

• Contacts family within two business days after receipt of the referral and consistently visits family as identified based on model criteria.
• Uses strategies to build trust and rapport with families.
• Achieves 85% of the identified number of visits in the home each month.
• Identifies key points and subtleties in a manner that promotes interaction even in adverse conditions.
• With family, summarizes visits, elicits confirmation, and plans for future contact.
• Accepts cultural diversity and integrates the family's values and culture into support plan that reflect the family's agenda and background. Respects differences and offers information about alternatives if certain cultural practices are harmful to any member of the family.
• Facilitates solutions that recognize that opinions/beliefs of family may differ from Family Support Worker.

Program and Professional Growth:

• Participates in team meetings and trainings, shares experience and insight at said events, seeks input from others, and utilizes any information learned in daily work practices.
• Raises concerns and questions in a manner that promotes discussion for solutions.
• Collaborates with Program Manager to identify and participate in other trainings or committees which can further professional growth.
• Identifies community needs and addresses those needs through team meetings and events.
• With the assistance of the Program Manager identifies strengths in performance as well as areas needing development; work together to plan and achieve desired performance goals.

Case Management:

• Recruits and maintains a caseload of up to 15 families.
• Incorporates families' strengths in the development of the participant's independence to solve their own problems.
• Builds support network with the family by developing a resource list of family members, friends, and community agencies.
• Develops the FGP with the family, monitoring progress and barriers to success.
• With the assistance of the Program Manager, plans visits ahead of time using case review, FGP, child development curriculum and age-appropriate toys.
• Reports incidents of child abuse and neglect and becomes an active member of the intervention team to assist families in modifying behaviors or conditions that promoted the abuse and neglect.

Promotes Parent Child Interaction:

• Performs the Developmental Screen with the parents and communicates the growth and development as well as any delays the child may have.
• Implements the child development curriculum based upon the parents' relationship with the child.
• Ensures that parents understand information provided and activities demonstrated. Models' behavior where appropriate and monitors progress.
• Ensures a medical home -- communicates the importance of well-baby care and immunizations.

Documentation:

• Within the required time frame(s) documents all participant encounters in Mary's Center EMR and any other grant specific databases.
• Tracks all home visits, immunizations, prenatal visits, well-baby care visits, developmental screens, and any relevant medical care needed by the family.
• Administers and scores developmental screens within a two-week period of the due date.
• FGPs are completed with the family at designated intervals or sooner if necessary.
• All measurement tools are completed on time based upon their timeline for completion
• Meets deadlines by completing and submitting monthly reports to the Program Manager.
• All forms are complete, proofread for accuracy, and ready for discussion during weekly supervision.

Agency:

• Participates in meetings and required events.
• Assists in the growth of the agency through problem-solving and support.
• Follows personnel practices. Seeks answers to questions surrounding personnel or agency issues.

Qualifications

The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skills, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities -

• HS diploma or GED equivalent required.
• Bachelor's degree in psychology, counseling, social service, or related behavioral health field preferred with course work in the areas of child development, family relations, and interpersonal skills.
• Professional experience working primarily with adults in an educational or learning environment.
• At least two years paid or volunteer experience under supervision working with families or children and their parents preferred. Knowledge of community resources.
• Experience with computers, entering information and Microsoft programs.
• Must have the ability to participate in evaluation components for the program and ability to implement research-based assessments, score and enter documentation into the system identified.
• Position requires ability to work independently in the field; experience with emergency systems and response; act decisively when required.
• Must be flexible to meet with families during evening and weekend hours as needed.

Must pass and implement the core components of the model to be effective in the role. Completion of additional core training on evidence-based curricula based on program assignment to include Foundational Curriculum of Parents as Teachers.

Language Requirement - Ability to communicate effectively in English is required. Additional language proficiency or fluency in Spanish and/or Amharic is highly desired.

Physical Demands - Regularly required to sit; frequently required to reach with hands and arms, walk, stoop, kneel, crouch, talk or hear; must be able to lift objects up to twenty-five (25) pounds.

Work Environment - Mostly in a typical office and/or home setting with quiet to moderate noise level. May be exposed to extreme cold, heat, and humidity due to outside weather conditions. This is a hybrid position, and includes a significant in-person presence when meeting with program families and team meetings.

The Benefits:

• Health Insurance: medical, dental & vision - plus retirement options through 403(b) contribution and investment opportunities
• 25 days of paid leave annually (in addition to paid holidays), plus 5 educational days
• Tuition reimbursement of $2000/year towards education assistance and professional development
• Transportation subsidy via metro & bus
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)