Job Details
**Family Support Specialist**
Early Childhood Education New Kent, Virginia Department **Early Childhood Education** Minimum Experience **Experienced** Compensation **$30,000-$42,000** The Family Support Specialist performs skilled human support work providing emotional support to at-risk families through in-home visits, teaching parenting skills, assisting clients with completing required documents for various programs, serving as liaison between parents and community agencies, coordinating and attending medical and social services appointments with parents, coordinating transportation for families, developing family service plans, maintaining files and records, preparing reports and related work as apparent or assigned.
Offer emotional support to new parents coping with the stresses of parenting a newborn; Show knowledge of healthy parent-child relationships; Teach necessary child-rearing skills, such as how to make an infant feel secure, getting the baby on a regular eating and sleeping schedule and keeping young children safe indoors and out.
Essential functions, as defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act, may include the following tasks, knowledge, skills and other characteristics. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
*Model positive parenting, such as effective age-appropriate discipline;
*Link families to medical providers to ensure that immunizations and well-care visits are on schedule; Involve socially isolated families in family, neighborhood, and community events;
*Collaborate with other community agencies serving families to utilize scarce resources and provide a comprehensive array of services;
*Support and build on existing family strengths and resources, even in a chaotic family environment:
*Ability to approach families from a family-centered service model.
Work environment : Work has no exposure to environmental conditions; work is generally in a moderately noisy location (e.g. business office, light traffic). Due to COVID-19, much of the work is telecommute, with the future expectation of visiting families at their homes or designated meeting spot.
Competencies:
-Technical Capacity: Open to reflective practices; Documents home visits in client files and enter information into data systems; ill advocate for nurturing, nonviolent discipline for children;
-Personal Effectiveness/Credibility: Demonstrate maturity and experience in successfully working with children 0-5 and their families; Demonstrate the acceptance of individual differences; Willingness to work with the culturally diverse populations present among the sites target population. Continue to support and encourage families even when change is no apparent. Have the maturity to set reasonable boundaries.
-Thoroughness: Capable of documenting plans for and observations of actions and interactions occurring during home visits
Possess the skills to recognize and seize teachable moments through skillful observations of parent and child.
An openness to reflective practices. awareness of unresolved trauma and its impacts.
-Collaboration Skills: Works effectively with partnering agencies, and has the desire and ability to encourage and support families in developing self-advocacy skills.
-Communication Proficiency: Demonstrate good writing and organizational skills; Meets with supervisor weekly for reflective and supportive supervision.
Physical demands: This work is sedentary and requires little to no exertion of force; work regularly requires sitting, occasional kneeling, frequently requires speaking or hearing and using hands to finger, handle or feel and occasionally requires standing and walking; work has standard vision requirements; vocal communication is required for expressing or exchanging ideas by means of the spoken word; hearing is required to understand words spoken at a normal volume; work requires preparing and analyzing written or computer data.
Travel required: Travel is required with mileage reimbursement. Must have own vehicle with full insurance coverage. Customer transport may be required for medical appointments.
Required education and experience: A Bachelor's degree in the Human Services field is preferred. High school diploma or G.E.D. issued by state department of education and a minimum of three years of work experience in a family services field will be considered. Infant Mental Health experience preferred.
Additional eligibility requirements: Valid driver's license in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Must pass a state and federal background check.
*Thrive Virginia provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements Thrive Virginia complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.*
*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. Thrive Virginia is a drug-free workplace environment.*
Other Duties: Be available to families after-hours on an emergency basis ;Be non-judgmental and relate to individuals who may not share an underlying commonality, including value system and behavior norms; Show the ability to work in a culturally diverse population, use culturally appropriate and sensitive materials; Show creativity and knowledge when working with community resources by helping the family meet its immediate needs, such as getting housing assistance, securing adequate and appropriate food, applying for health and social service programs, or handling a family crisis; Enjoy and function appropriately with long-term, ongoing projects without needing immediate feedback or results for personal validation; Establish and maintain person/programmatic boundaries while providing supportive services; Provide and coordinate transportation for families as needed; Conducts appropriate screenings and assessments to ensure the proper development of target children.
Location New Kent, Virginia Department Early Childhood Education Minimum Experience Experienced Compensation $30,000-$42,000