Mental Health and Development Clinician

VOLUNTEERS OF AMERICA SOUTH CENTRAL LOUISIANA•Lake Charles, LA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Child First is an intensive, early childhood, two-generation, home visiting model designed to help families build strong, nurturing relationships that heal and protect young children (prenatal through age five years) from the impact of trauma and chronic stress. The program aims to identify children early to provide care for emotional and behavioral health, developmental and learning success, and connect families with services and resources for their well-being. The Mental Health and Developmental Clinician partners with a Care Coordinator to support these families. The Clinician utilizes Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), a relationship-based, dyadic, parent-child treatment model, focusing on the primary attachment relationships of the young child. This involves engaging with both the caregiver and child in a supportive, reflective, and exploratory manner to foster a protective, nurturing, and responsive parent-child relationship. The therapeutic intervention helps caregivers understand typical developmental challenges, reflect on the meaning and feelings behind a child's behavior, support problem-solving, and understand the psychodynamic relationship between parental feelings, history, and their response to the child. The Clinician also provides consultation to teachers in early care and education settings as needed.

Requirements

Licensed or license-eligible (provisionally licensed) master’s level mental health provider.
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).
Able to communicate well verbally and in writing.
Comfortable with computers and experienced with Word and Excel.
Reliable vehicle and appropriate insurance for home visits.
Highly organized, self-motivated, reliable, and flexible.
Openness to learning, capacity for self-reflection, eagerness to participate in reflective clinical supervision, and desire to be part of a team.

Nice To Haves

Experience providing mental health assessment and consultation to early care and education sites preferred.
Knowledge and experience working with adults with mental health, substance use, and cognitive challenges preferred.
Experience providing intervention within diverse home and community settings preferred.
Ability to speak a second language (Spanish, Portuguese, Creole, other), highly valued.
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 preferred.
Past CPP training is highly valued.

Responsibilities

Engage with the Child First family and the Care Coordinator 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 Care Coordinator 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.
Support 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 Care Coordinator and Clinical Supervisor.
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 Supervisor.
Engage actively in all aspects of the Child First Learning Collaborative, including in-person or live-remote training, distance learning curriculum, and specialty trainings.
Track completion of all assessments and enter in the appropriate database.
Keep all appropriate documentation for clinical accountability and reimbursement.
Maintain schedule and complete tasks to achieve home visiting Benchmarks and meet Accreditation standards.
Participate in other clinical and administrative activities as appropriate.