Summary of Position
The Children’s Home Society Mental Health and Developmental Clinician partners with a Family Resource Partner to engage families who are referred to the Child First home-based intervention. The primary goal of Child First is to strengthen the caregiver-child relationship. We believe that it would serves both as a protective buffer to unavoidable stress and directly facilitates the child’s emotional, language, and cognitive growth. The Clinician uses trauma-informed CPP, a relationship-based, dyadic, parent-child treatment model, which focuses on the primary attachment relationships of the young child. The Clinician engages with both the caregiver and child in a supportive, reflective, and exploratory manner which fosters a protective, nurturing, and responsive parent-child relationship. The Clinician’s therapeutic intervention focuses on 1) helping caregivers understand typical developmental challenges and expectations; 2) increasing caregivers’ ability to reflect on the meaning and feelings motivating a child’s behavior; 3) supporting caregivers’ problem solving; and 4) helping caregivers understand the psychodynamic relationship between parental feelings, history, and the caregiver response to the child. The Clinician also provides consultation to teachers in early care and education settings, as needed.
*Please note that this is NOT a remote position but in the home working with families and/or community work position.*
Key Job Responsibilities
Engage with the family and the Family Resource Partner in the collaborative family assessment process (i.e., gather information from interviews, observations of interactions and play, reviewed records, collateral sources, and standardized measures).
Use all available information to develop a thoughtful, well-integrated clinical formulation and Child and Family Plan of Care, in partnership with the Family Resource Partner and family.
Provide Child First home-based psychotherapeutic intervention with young children and their caregivers using relational, dyadic psychotherapy (CPP) and other modalities.
Help the caregiver gain insight regarding personal history (including trauma history), feelings for the child, and current parenting practices.
Avert crisis situations by assisting the family in times of urgent need (e.g., risk of harm to child or caregiver, pending child removal), in consultation with the Family Resource Partner and Clinical Director.
Provide mental health and developmental assessment and consultation within early care and education settings and to other early childhood providers.
Embrace use of videotaping to enhance both therapeutic work with families and reflective supervision.
Engage in weekly individual, Team, and group reflective clinical supervision with Clinical Director.
Engage actively in all aspects of the Child First Learning Collaborative, including in-person trainings, distance learning curriculum, and specialty trainings.
Keep all appropriate documentation for clinical accountability and reimbursement.
Participate in other clinical and administrative activities as appropriate.
Qualifications
Licensed or provisionally licensed Master’s or Doctoral level mental health provider (e.g., LCSW (A), LMFT, clinical psychologist, other).
Experience working psychotherapeutically with culturally diverse children and families, including parent-child therapeutic work and play therapy with very young children (0-5 years), for a minimum of three years. Past CPP training is highly valued.
Openness to learning, capacity for self-reflection, and eagerness to participate in reflective clinical supervision.
Knowledge of relationship-based, psychodynamic intervention and early child development; parent-child relationships and attachment theory; effects of trauma and environmental risks on early childhood brain development, especially violence exposure, maternal depression, and substance abuse; and community-level risk factors (e.g., poverty, homelessness).
Experience providing mental health assessment and consultation to early care and education sites.
Knowledge and experience working with adults with mental health, substance use, and cognitive challenges.
Experience providing intervention within diverse home and community settings.
Ability to speak a second language (especially Spanish), highly valued.
Strong commitment to the vision, mission, and goals of Children’s Home Society of NC.
Highly organized, self-motivated, reliable, and flexible (including willingness to work non-traditional hours, including at least one evening).
Able to work as part of a team.
Able to communicate well verbally and in writing.
Comfortable with computers and experienced with Word and Excel.
Maintain a valid North Carolina driver’s license, adequate auto insurance, and have access to an operating vehicle in order to attend to CHS business.
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).
