CLASSIFICATION: Full-Time
LOCATION: Irvington, New Jersey
WORK HOURS: 37.5 hours /week
SALARY: $45,500 /year
JOB SUMMARY: The Family Support Worker (FSW) is responsible for establishing and maintaining a regular and long-term relationship with the families enrolled in the Healthy Families/TANF Initiative for Parents Passaic Program. The FSW conducts home visitation services from pregnancy through the child’s third year.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES:
- Outreach families referred through Connecting NJ or a Service Provider.
- Conduct family-centered and strength-based Home Visits based on the assigned enrolled family’s level of service; each home visit should last one hour.
- Conduct the FROG Scale (parent survey tool) with parents to identify strengths/risk factors to support the family throughout home visitation services.
- Conduct weekly outreach efforts to engage hard-to-reach clients.
- Document, in FamSys, weekly home visits, assessment tools, and required forms, in a timely manner.
- Utilize Parents As Teachers curriculum to help improve parent-child interaction.
- Establish a trusting relationship.
- Assist in strengthening the parent-child relationship.
- Assist parents in improving their skills to optimize the home environment.
- Assist in increasing the family support system and increase the family’s ability to problem solve and assume the role of advocating for themselves and their children.
- Responsible for assisting the family in establishing goals and a plan for the accomplishment of those goals. The assessment of the normal growth and development of the target child.
- Identify and refer to other supportive agencies, including healthcare appointments.
- Assist with organizing and facilitating parent workshops.
- Provide advocacy at appointments, as needed.
- Monitor current health and developmental trends to better assist families.
- Maintain own functioning vehicle in good working condition at all times.
- Maintain manual and computerized client files in a confidential manner.
- Handles other assignments as requested.
- Knowledge of normal child growth/development and parent-child relationships.
- Experience in working with community agencies, including implementing referral processes.
- Ability to relate to families from a strength-based model even in an apparently chaotic family environment; ability to approach families from a family-centered service model.
- Demonstrates motivation and ability to learn and practice basic supportive skills.
- Flexible availability for home visits
- Flexible availability for community outreach/tabling events
- Non-judgmental
- Enjoys and functions appropriately with long-term, ongoing projects; doesn’t need immediate feedback or results for personal validation.
- Ability to establish and maintain personal/programmatic boundaries, while providing supportive services.
- Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to relate to individuals who may not share basic commonalities, including value system and behavior norms.
- Believes in and is comfortable with advocating for nurturing, nonviolent discipline of children.
- Experience in working with culturally diverse communities/families and the ability to be culturally sensitive and appropriate.
- Demonstrates strong writing, effective communication and organizational skills
- Enters and maintains data entry of client information into database(s).
- Open to reflective practice (i.e. has capacity for introspection, communicates awareness of self in relation to others, recognizes value of supervision, etc.)
- Ability to travel throughout New Jersey to attend required core trainings, curricula training and ongoing trainings required by the model and/or agency.
- Infant mental health endorsement level I or II preferred.
JOB REQUIREMENTS:
- Minimum of a High School Diploma or GED equivalent with two years of experience in working with children (0-3 years of age) and families or Bachelor’s Degree or higher
- Computer literacy required.
- Bi-lingual strongly preferred: English and Spanish/Creole/French/other
All PMCH employees must comply with the guidelines of PMCH’s Immunization Policy.