Father Engagement Specialist – Maternal Child Health

Gallatin County•Bozeman, MT

53d•Hybrid

About The Position

This position is located in the Gallatin City-County Health Department and performs duties that support the vision, mission, and goals of the Department. This position is responsible for providing evidenced-based home visiting services to promote and maintain individual, group, and community health. The role emphasizes home visits for high-risk families to assess health issues, monitor infant and child growth and development, monitor clients, develop plans of care, and complete required documentation. A key responsibility is implementing fatherhood programming, services, and referrals for the Healthy Gallatin Home Visiting Program, with the goal of improving child and family well-being by engaging fathers in activities that lead to improved life changes for their children and their own self-sufficiency. The specialist will collaborate with community health care professionals, families, partner organizations, and others to ensure client well-being, develop treatment plans, provide referrals, and advocate for fathers with social service agencies. The role also involves preparing reports, providing presentations, and reviewing caseloads and statistics to assess program success and identify areas for improvement in healthcare for high-risk families. The work may involve home visits to high-risk families in potentially contentious situations and exposure to contagious diseases. Other duties may include participation in disease prevention and health promotion programs, public outreach, and contributing to departmental responses to public health emergencies. This position reports to the Maternal Child Health Services Group Manager and the Maternal Child Health Nurse Supervisor and does not supervise other personnel.

Requirements

Knowledge of the principles and practices, theories and concepts of the field of social work, human behavior and child development, mental health, available community resources and services, program management; record keeping and understand the philosophy of family support.
Knowledge of parenting education; crisis intervention strategies; group facilitation; education methods and techniques and the working knowledge of healthy parent child interaction and child development.
Good problem-solving skills.
Ability to make independent determinations.
Ability to recognize the need for professional intervention.
Ability to make appropriate recommendations to the team and work as part of a team.
Ability to communicate effectively verbally and in writing.
Basic computer skills.
Bachelor's Degree in Social Work, Social Services, or a related field.
Two (2) years of job-related work experience.
Valid driver’s license.
Provide own transportation to conduct out of office job duties (mileage reimbursement provided under the County policy).
Must be insurable under the County’s liability policies.
Successfully pass a driving and criminal background check.

Nice To Haves

Competencies/Knowledge-Skills-Abilities (KSA’s) Public Health Tier: 1 – Frontline employee
Organizational Competencies: Continuous Quality Improvement, Inclusion, Team Building, Communication, Reliability, Organization, Integrity, Motivation, Productivity, Purpose.
Job Specific Competencies: Data Analytics and Assessment Skills, Policy Development and Program Planning Skills, Communication Skills, Health Equity Skills, Community Partnership Skills, Public Health Sciences Skills, Management and Finance Skills, Leadership and Systems Thinking Skills.

Responsibilities

Provides family support through intensive home visits for high-risk families to assess and monitor family/father needs based on historical and current information.
Establishes a plan with goals, objectives, and activities that can be accomplished with support.
Provides professional consultation, educational information on appropriate topics, makes referrals to community resource agencies and specialists, and provides support services to fathers enrolled in the home visiting programs.
Implements fatherhood programming, services, and referrals for the Healthy Gallatin Home Visitation Program with close collaboration with the Public Health Nurses and Social Workers and serves as a liaison between the home visiting program and the courts.
Works with the Maternal Child Health Services Group Manager and Maternal Child Health Nurse Supervisor to develop program evaluation methods for engaging fathers and providing ongoing services.
Reviews caseloads, files, statistics, and summaries associated with the program to identify success, trends, issues of concern, and opportunities to provide improved and/or more comprehensive services to high-risk families.
Follows up with clients to ensure appropriate services have been obtained, to determine progress in following plans, and to determine if changes are appropriate and necessary.
Implements changes as needed and provide additional education and support.
Responds to crises on an as-needed basis by assisting family members in resolving problems and de-escalating critical situations and events.
Completes required documentation in an accurate and timely manner for the purpose of keeping current and progressive data related to needs, efforts, progress, outcome, and communication with client.
Maintains current records for multiple programs.
Represents the Health Department on community task forces, coalitions, and collaborations.
Develops and conducts presentations on social service and health department programs and resources to a variety of audiences within the community.
Enhances community health through participation in a wide variety of local and countywide activities that promote partnerships, collaboration, and education associated with effective public health resources and services.
Teaches classes and makes public presentations on topics such as fatherhood and parenting.
Collaborates with other organizations and agencies to provide comprehensive health services to individual clients, as well to develop population-based services.
Participates on community boards and committees as a health care professional.
Provides information regarding vaccinations to patient or parent, including vaccines required for school entrance.
Keeps accurate records of immunizations or assists in accessing records as needed.
Promotes immunizations through public education and social media when needed.
Manages and coordinates the activities of the FICMMR team, according to guidelines established by DPHHS.
Recruits and maintains multi-disciplinary team membership.
Receives reports of fetal, infant, or child deaths, and seeks reports from appropriate team members.
Facilitates the reviews to gain a complete and accurate understanding of the circumstances leading to the death.
Identify any modifiable risk factors, gaps, or barriers the team can address focusing on prevention.
Engage and utilize your team (or health department staff) to help select, plan, deliver, and evaluate best practice, injury prevention activities or strategies to address preventable deaths.
Perform a variety of other duties as assigned by supervisor.
This includes coordinating special projects and events, system and grant research and analysis, representing the profession and the County at meetings, conferences, and special events, attending continuing education and training as required and accounting of time electronically at the end of the workweek.
If the County Commission proclaims a local emergency due to an actual or threatened disaster such as an earthquake, fire, riot, flood, etc., County employees may be required to provide services during the emergency and for a subsequent period of assessment and recovery.