Social Worker - Medical Foster Home Program Coordinator at Charleston

JOB SUMMARY:

Southern charm, hospitality and history imbue Charleston, one of the most well-preserved cities in the United States.

Vacancy Identification Number (VIN): 916658 

To fulfill President Lincolns promise – "To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan" – by serving and honoring the men and women who are Americas Veterans. 

How would you like to become a part of a team providing compassionate care to Veterans?  Located in the historic part of the city of Charleston, the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center serves more than 53,000 veterans in 22 counties along the South Carolina and Georgia coastline in our main Medical Center or one of six community-based outpatient clinics.  The main Medical Center provides acute medical, surgical, and psychiatric inpatient care, as well as outpatient primary and mental health care to low country veterans who require more than 659,000 outpatient visits and approximately 4,300 inpatient stays annually.  The 117 bed hospital currently operates 96 beds and a 28 bed nursing home unit.  Charleston VAMC supports the Vet Centers in North Charleston, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia.

As a VA professional, your opportunities are endless. With many openings in the multiple functions of VA, you will have a wide range of opportunities at your fingertips. Not only is it the largest, most technologically advanced integrated health care system in the nation, but we also provide many other services to Veterans through the Benefits Administration and National Cemeteries.

 

Your salary and grade will be determined by the Professional Standards Board (PSB).  The PSB is a peer review process.  The PSB will review your individual qualifications, education, professional training/internship(s) and professional experience to determine the most appropriate salary and grade based on your individual accomplishments. 

 

KEY REQUIREMENTS

• U. S. Citizenship
• English Language Proficiency required
• Must pass pre-employment examination
• Background and-or Security Investigation required

DUTIES:Back to top

The Medical Foster Home (MFH) Program Coordinator is a licensed or certified Social worker to independently practice social work at an advanced level. Incumbent is assigned administrative responsibility and is in charge of program development managing daily operation of the program , recruitment, and development of the foster homes, case management, development of policies and care processes, coordination with HBPC interdisciplinary treatment teams, preparing reports and statistics for facility, VISN and National use.  Individual is under the direct supervision of the Chief, Social Work Services.

Major duties include: 

• Must have knowledge of PACT Team approach.  
• Responsible for maximizing psychosocial quality of life issues in order to assist veterans to remain in their home or in a less restrictive level of care other than a nursing home, and to keep them out of the hospital as often as possible.
• Serves veterans who tend to have serious, frequent severe crises; lack family or an adequate community support network; are poor at self-monitoring; frequently fail to comply with instructions and treatments; have significant trouble coping and require continuing psychosocial and medical support. 
• Must have a high level of skill in assessing and treating complicated psychosocial problems of Veterans and their families/significant others. 
• Receives and completes consults from interdisciplinary teams and other social workers on complex, difficult cases, using advanced practice skills and expertise. 
• Interviews veterans and their families to conduct psychosocial assessments and determine underlying causes of the presenting problems.
• Responsible for selecting of homes and residents, establishing intake processes, establishing oversight responsibilities, and maintaining a record-keeping system for the program.  
• Provides training to caregivers, students, residents, interns and fellows from other disciplines regarding the advantages and disadvantages of a medical foster home.
• Establishes a continuing relationship with the foster homes caregiver and veteran.
• Serves as an advocate.

 Tour of Duty: Monday-Friday, 08:00 am to 4:30 pm

 

QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED:Back to top

BASIC REQUIREMENTS: 

Citizenship.  Be a citizen of the United States.  

Education.  Have a Masters degree in Social Work (MSW), Masters of Science in Social Work (MSSW), Masters of Social Service Administration (MSSA), Masters of Social Service (MSS), Masters of Social Administration (MSA), and Masters of Social Welfare from a school of social work fully accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE).  Graduates  of schools of social work that are in candidacy status do not meet this requirement until the school of social work is fully accredited.  A doctoral degree in social work may not be substituted for the masters degree in social work.  [Verification of the degree can be made by going to the CSWE website to verify if that social work degree meets the accreditation standards for a master of social work.

Licensure.  Persons hired or reassigned to social worker positions in the GS-0185 series in VHA must be licensed or certified by a state to independently practice social work at the masters degree level.  Current state requirements may be found on the OHRM website.

Physical Requirements.   See VA Handbook 5005, Part III, Chapter 2, paragraph 7, and VA Directive and Handbook 5019 Occupational Health Services.   All applicants must be physically and mentally able to perform efficiently the duties of the position. 

English Language Proficiency.   Social workers must be proficient in spoken and written English in accordance with VA Handbook 5005, Part II, chapter 3, section A, paragraph 3j, this part.   Applicant must be proficient in spoken and written English as required by 38 U.S.C. 7402(d), and 7407 (d).

GRADE DETERMINATIONS- CREDITABLE EXPERIENCE:

Knowledge of Current Professional Social Work Practices.   To be creditable, the experience must have required the use of knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics associated with current professional social work practice.   The experience or education must be post-MSW degree.   Experience and education satisfying this requirement must be active professional practice, which is paid/non-paid employment as a professional social worker, as defined by the appropriate state licensing board.

Quality of Experience.   Experience is only creditable if it is obtained following graduation with a masters degree in social work and if it includes work as a professional social worker directly related to the position to be filled.   Qualifying experience must also be at a level comparable to social work experience at the next lower level.

Advanced Practice Level.   Advanced Practice Level is defined as the ability to provide independent and expert clinical psychosocial and case management services in a specialized area of practice to veterans who tend to have serious and severe crises, may lack any familial and community support, may be poor self-monitors, may frequently fail to comply with instructions and treatment, or may have major deficits in coping skills and require continuing professional psychological support.   The advanced practice or Senior Social Worker has an increased depth and breadth of practice skills; has expertise in participating in the professional development of colleagues through mentorship and teaching; demonstrates leadership in developing and expanding professional intervention strategies; demonstrates leadership in defining and attending to professional practice issues; and has the ability to expand the conceptual knowledge of the profession.   The advanced practice or Senior Social Worker will make independent professional decisions and recommendations for agency action; the consequences to the veteran of these decisions and actions may be quite serious.   Work involves intensive social work services requiring the exercise of mature professional judgment and the flexible use of a wide range of complex social work practice skills not typically required in routine social work interventions.   The advanced practice or senior social worker has mastered a range of specialized interventions and provides consultation to colleagues, renders professional opinions based on experience and expertise, develops new models of psychosocial assessment or intervention, and incorporates complex multiple causation in differential diagnosis and treatment.   The advanced practice or Senior Social Worker utilizes outcome evaluations to further treatment and designs system changes based on empirical findings.

GRADE DETERMINATIONS:  GS-12 -

Experience, Education and Licensure. Senior Social Workers have experience that demonstrates possession of advanced practice skills and judgment. At least two years should be in an area of specialized social work practice. Senior social workers must be licensed or certified by a state at the advanced practice level which included an ASWB advanced generalist or clinical examination, unless they are grandfathered by the state in which they are licensed to practice at the advanced practice level (except for licenses issued in California, which administers its own clinical examination for advanced practice). Senior social workers may have certification or other post-masters training from a nationally recognized professional organization or university that includes a defined curriculum/course of study and internship or equivalent supervised professional experience in a specialty.  In addition, the candidate must demonstrate the professional KSAs, below.

1. Advanced knowledge of and mastery of theories and modalities used in the specialized treatment of complex physical or mental illness.

2. Ability to incorporate complex multiple causation in differential diagnosis and treatment of veteran patients, including making psychosocial and psychiatric diagnoses within approved clinical privileges or scope of practice.

3. Ability to determine priority for services and provide specialized treatment services.

4. Advanced and expert skill in a range of specialized interventions and treatment modalities used in specialty treatment programs or with special patient populations. This includes individual, group, and/or family counseling or psychotherapy and advanced level psychosocial and/or case management interventions used in the treatment of veterans with polytraumatic injuries, spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, visual impairment, post-traumatic stress disorder, etc.

5. Advanced knowledge and expert skill in developing and implementing methods for measuring effectiveness of social work practice and services in the specialty area, utilizing outcome evaluations to improve treatment services.

6. In-depth knowledge of the program coordinated, and demonstrated knowledge and ability to write policies, procedures, and/or practice guidelines for the program.

7. Knowledge and skill in management/administration, which includes supervision, consultation, negotiation, and monitoring.

8.  Ability to supervise multidisciplinary staff assigned to the program.

9. Ability to organize work, set priorities, meet multiple deadlines, and evaluate assigned program area(s).

10. Ability to provide training, orientation, consultation and guidance within clinical specialization of practice.

 

IN DESCRIBING YOUR EXPERIENCE, PLEASE BE CLEAR AND SPECIFIC. WE MAY NOT MAKE ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING YOUR EXPERIENCE.

References:  VA Handbook 5005/23, Part II, Appendix G39, SOCIAL WORKER QUALIFICATION STANDARD, dated February 2009

 

APPLICANTS PLEASE NOTE:  Education must be accredited by an accrediting institution recognized by the U.S. Department of Education in order for it to be credited towards qualifications (particularly positions with a positive education requirement.)  Therefore, applicants must report only attendance and/or degrees from schools accredited by accrediting institutions recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.  Applicants can verify accreditation at the following website: http://www.ed.gov/admins/finaid/accred/index.html All education claimed by applicants will be verified by the appointing agency accordingly.  If you are using foreign education to meet qualification requirements, you must send a Certificate of Foreign Equivalency with your transcript in order to receive credit for that education.

Employees must meet qualification standards and other regulatory requirements by the closing date of the announcement.

HOW YOU WILL BE EVALUATED:

Applicants responsibility:  It is the applicants responsiblity to submit documentation to support his/her application for this position.  Applicant is responsible for ensuring that all experience, education, formal training, award recognition, etc. are documented in the application package.  Experience may include voluntary or other non-paid experience in the appropriate field.  If you feel that your training record contains information pertinent to your qualifications, then you must submit a printed copy of your training record with your application package.  Your training record will become a part of the specific vacancy file and will not be filed in Official Personnel Folder.

This announcement is not intended to cover all aspects of the duties, responsibilities or qualifications of this position.  Request for copies, return of forms or transfer of consideration to another announcement will not be honored.

Interviews: Management may interview candidates for this position and may elect to use the Performance Based Interviewing (PBI) process.  If PBI is used, questions will be job-related, reasonably consistent and fair to all candidates.  You can isit http://www.va.gov/pbi to learn more about PBI, frequently asked questions and aids to prepare for an interview.  Additionally, printed reference material is available at each Human Resources Office. 

INCOMPLETE APPLICATIONS will receive a rating of IFM (ineligible due to missing forms).  Requests for reconsideration of ratings will not be considered for applicants who fail to submit a complete application package.  We cannot be held responsible for incompatible software, fax transmissions, delays in mail service, etc.

 

Country: USA, State: South Carolina, City: Charleston, Company: Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration.