Correctional Youth Services Specialist - Platte Valley Youth SC- Greeley

Job Title

Direct Care/Essential Role at Platte Valley Youth Services Center

This position is a direct care/essential role that provides direct and engaging supervision of youth in DYS State Operated Secure Facilities. Specific duties and expectations are:
Safety/Security, Youth Center Programming, Documentation/Recording and Reporting, Training, and Organizational Accountability. Positions may be required to work overtime on a rotating basis, based on business needs.

Duties include but are not limited to the following:

• Safety/Security:
  Work involves providing direct care, safety, security, and supervision of adjudicated and/or pre-adjudicated youth in a secure setting. Monitor, participate, support, and enforce behavioral management plans for individual youth as directed.
• Youth Center Programming:
  Actively and with positive engagement, implement and follow the Youth Center's behavioral management program, teach, coach, and redirect youth within the program.
• Documentation/Recording and Reporting:
  Document observations of youth behavior and response to program(s) and document all unit activities and required information in appropriate logs and records systems.
• Organizational Accountability:
  Through all communications and behaviors demonstrate, support, and contribute to a healthy, positive, and respectful cultural climate throughout the Youth Center.
• Training:
  Complete DYS Pre-Service training academy, Youth Center training, and orientation process as a new employee. Some travel may be required. Complete all assigned online training, and maintain and support the Division's prevailing behavior management and intervention strategies.

Education and Experience:

High school diploma or General Education Diploma, (GED). Substitutions:
None. These positions are not sedentary positions. Employees are typically on their feet during the entire shift. Youth living quarters are located on multiple levels and employees must frequently climb stairs in the performance of job duties. Employees must also be willing and able to physically intervene with assaultive youth.

Preferred Qualifications:

• College education in a behavioral health and or juvenile justice-related field.
• Experience working with adjudicated and/or detained youth within a secure residential facility and/or a behavioral health setting.
• Experience facilitating psycho educational groups.
• Education/experience working with adolescents who have trauma.
• Experience working with youth in positive leadership roles, such as mentoring and coaching.
• Experience utilizing verbal de-escalation and motivational techniques.
• Relevant years of state service experience.

Highly Desirable

Competencies:

• Skilled in conflict management.
• Strong work ethic, integrity, and dependability.
• Sound judgment and decision-making skills.
• Self-control, composure, and the ability to manage stressful situations.
• Ability to verbally communicate clearly and willingness to do so respectfully.
• Ability to identify and act on changes, inappropriate activity, hazards or potential security breaches and verbally communicate pertinent information.
• Ability to study information and recount events in a written, factual, concise, and legible method.

Work Environment:

• Employees are required to work shift hours. This includes evenings, nights, weekends, and holidays. Shifts may vary between agencies and may include eight (8) hours, ten (10) hours, or twelve (12) hours in duration. Mandatory overtime may be required. Day shift work is not usually available. As a Correctional Youth Security Officer, your position is considered essential and you may be required to report to work during inclement weather.

Conditions of Employment:

• Full Background: CDHS employees (all Direct contact with vulnerable persons): CBI name check and fingerprint check, ICON Colorado court database, Medicare fraud database, Reference Checks, Professional License verification (licensure requirements), Drug Screen, PREA (Division of Youth Services), Trails check (direct contact with children), CAPS (direct contact with adults – Mental Health Institutes, Regional…