Senior Residence Counselor
About The Position
The Senior Residence Counselor works at the Children’s Community Residence, the Adirondack Youth Lodge (AYL), which provides youth with a temporary, safe place to live with supervision, structure, skill building, and behavior support. The role ensures residents’ health, safety, and welfare, enhances their quality of life, and supports community inclusion. The Senior Residence Counselor also trains and supervises Residence Counselors and serves as a leader for them. This position oversees shift operations, including organizing and delegating duties, making decisions about unanticipated situations, coordinating contact with the nurse or administrator on call, scheduling staff breaks, creating staff schedules, and providing on-site onboarding, training, and support. It has overall responsibility for youth programming and care, including assessing strengths and needs, supporting life skills and other development, coordinating wraparound services, maintaining basic necessities, responding to crises, supporting outings, monitoring and dispensing medications, and following service and treatment plans. The role requires accurate and timely documentation, communication with service providers and supervisors, maintaining staffing ratios, participating in meetings and training, and following agency policies, universal precautions, and confidentiality requirements. The AYL operates 24 hours a day, seven days per week. The schedule is determined by the supervisor to meet program needs and may vary.
Requirements
- High school diploma or GED.
- Three years of experience working with people with developmental disabilities or mental health needs.
- Maintain training, licenses, and certifications as required by regulatory and agency requirements.
- Demonstrate flexibility with scheduling.
Responsibilities
- Supervise Residence Counselors during the shift, organize and delegate duties, make decisions about unanticipated occurrences, coordinate when to contact the nurse or administrator on call, and schedule staff breaks.
- Create staff schedules and provide on-site onboarding, training, and support.
- Oversee youth programming and care, identifying each youth’s strengths and unmet needs.
- Support youth with daily living and independent living skills, socialization, supportive counseling, educational and vocational needs, family support, physical health, recreation, and hobbies.
- Coordinate wraparound service planning with community-based partners.
- Ensure adequate food, shelter, and clothing are available for each youth.
- Report nursing or medical concerns to the house RN and supervisor and follow recommendations as appropriate.
- Provide individual assessment and instruction in daily living skills and prepare meals with youth involvement.
- Intervene and assist in crisis situations, accessing appropriate resources as needed.
- Support community outings, including transportation.
- Monitor and dispense medications and adhere to physician’s orders.
- Provide programming documented in service and treatment plans and communicate programming information to service providers and supervisors as needed.
- Ensure staffing ratios are maintained at all times.
- Demonstrate cultural beliefs in daily interactions and use the least restrictive prompting.
- Participate in staff, team, and residence meetings and attend required training and maintain required certifications.
- Complete timely and accurate documentation of programming, client care, and medical information as required.
- Assist with residence cleanliness and upkeep as instructed and follow universal precautions.
- Protect client confidentiality and professionally represent Citizen Advocates, Inc. with families, other organizations, and the community.
- Follow the program policy and procedure manual and perform related duties as assigned.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
High school or GED
