Social Worker, Credible Westchester

Center for Community Alternatives • Westchester, NY

3d • Onsite

About The Position

The Social Worker (SW) will provide trauma-informed, clinically grounded, and community-rooted support within the Credible Westchester (CW) initiative. As part of a five-person team—Director, Social Worker, and three Credible Service Providers (CSPs)—the Social Worker will help stabilize, guide, and advocate for individuals navigating homelessness, behavioral-health challenges, substance dependence, and chronic system involvement. The Social Worker will conduct initial assessments, develop individualized case plans, and collaborate closely with CSPs to ensure participants receive coordinated, person-centered support. This role strengthens CW’s mission “to increase the efficacy of service delivery… by increasing client engagement and investment” and to serve as a countywide “hub for… the most vulnerable and at-risk populations.”

Requirements

• Master’s degree in Social Work (MSW) or related field; licensure (LMSW/LCSW) preferred or in progress.
• Demonstrated commitment to trauma-informed, restorative, and culturally responsive practice.
• Experience working with individuals impacted by homelessness, behavioral-health challenges, substance dependence, or the criminal legal system.
• Ability to collaborate with staff who bring lived experience as primary expertise.
• Strong crisis-intervention skills and comfort working in community-based settings.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in reentry, harm reduction, street outreach, or behavioral-health navigation.
• Familiarity with Westchester County systems and community-based resources.
• Experience working in interdisciplinary teams that blend clinical and lived-experience expertise.

Responsibilities

• Provide trauma-informed, culturally responsive behavioral-health support to participants experiencing crisis, instability, or chronic system involvement.
• Offer short-term counseling, motivational interviewing, and harm-reduction-aligned interventions.
• Support participants in accessing mental-health and substance-use treatment, ensuring services remain “trauma-informed, culturally competent, and community-rooted.”
• Help participants understand treatment options, rights, and pathways through county behavioral-health systems.
• Work collaboratively with CSPs to ensure clinical needs are addressed through relational, dignity-centered engagement.
• Conduct comprehensive, strengths-based initial assessments for all new participants, integrating behavioral-health, housing, legal, and social-service needs.
• Develop individualized, restorative case plans that reflect participant goals, lived experience, and CW’s relational engagement model.
• Update case plans as participant needs evolve, ensuring plans remain flexible, person-centered, and grounded in dignity.
• Coordinate care across systems, addressing the documented challenge that high-need individuals “struggle to navigate and effectively engage with these services.”
• Ensure assessments and case plans support CW’s role as a connector—not a duplicator—of existing county services.
• Work closely with CSPs to co-manage participant needs, blending clinical expertise with lived-experience wisdom.
• Participate in restorative supervision circles, reflective practice sessions, and healing-centered debriefs facilitated by the Director.
• Build CSP capacity in trauma-informed care, crisis navigation, and behavioral-health literacy.
• Uphold CW’s commitment that supervision and staffing honor lived experience as expertise, consistent with the program’s design to be “entirely supervised and staffed by individuals with lived experience.”
• Collaborate with DSS, DCMH, OMH, DOCS, Legal Aid, shelters, hospitals, and community-based organizations to ensure coordinated, person-centered care.
• Contribute to the cross-sector planning committee, maintaining at least 50% lived-experience representation throughout the pilot.
• Help develop shared assessment tools, referral pathways, and data-sharing protocols.
• Support CW’s role in disrupting siloed service delivery by fostering shared accountability, transparent communication, and coordinated problem-solving across systems.
• Complete clinical notes, assessments, and service plans in accordance with CW protocols.
• Contribute to weekly, monthly, and quarterly reporting required by DCJS and county partners.
• Support restorative evaluation processes that center “participant voice, qualitative insight, and lived-experience expertise.”
• Provide narrative insights that help identify gaps in service coordination and opportunities for systemic improvement.
• Maintain data integrity and uphold CW’s commitment to both quantitative and narrative-based evaluation.

Benefits

• 12 paid holidays per year
• 20 days of earned time off (ETO) for full-time staff, with the ability to use it after 90-days of employment.
• Time off is earned starting on your first day.
• 7 days of paid sick time
• Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level