ACT Therapist

Description

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Provide service coordination (case management) for an assigned group of clients including coordinating and monitoring the activities of the individual treatment team.
• Assume primary responsibility for developing, writing, implementing, evaluating, and revising overall treatment goals and plans in collaboration with the client and with the ITT.
• Provide individual supportive therapy and symptom management.
• Ensure immediate changes are made in treatment plans as clients’ needs change.
• Educate and support clients’ families.
• Advocate for clients’ rights and preferences.
• Participate in client-centered comprehensive assessment of psychiatric history (e.g., onset, course and effect of illness, past treatment and responses, and risk behaviors), mental status, and diagnosis; physical health and dental health; use of drugs or alcohol; education and employment; social development and functioning; activities of daily living (e.g., self-care, living situation, nutrition, money management); and family structure and relationships.
• Consult with community agencies and families to maintain coordination in the treatment process.
• Perform shift management in coordination with other ACT shift managers according to established policy and procedures.
• Provide on-call crisis intervention covering nighttime hours and serve as a backup to evening and weekend staff.
• Document client progress to maintain a permanent record of client activity according to established methods and procedures.
• Participate in daily staff organizational meetings and treatment planning review meetings.
• Participate in providing substance use and treatment services.

Psychiatric Treatment and Dual Diagnosis Substance Abuse Services

• Assist in the provision of ongoing assessment of clients’ mental illness symptoms and clients’ response to treatment.
• Make appropriate changes in treatment plans to ensure immediate and appropriate interventions are provided in response to changes in mental status or behavior which put clients at risk (e.g., suicidality).
• Assist in the provision of symptom education clients to identify their mental illness symptoms.
• Assist in the provision of direct clinical services to clients on an individual, group, and family basis in the office and in community settings to teach behavioral symptom-management techniques to alleviate and manage symptoms not reduced by medication and to promote personal growth and development by assisting clients to adapt to and cope with internal and external stresses.
• Assist in the provision of individual and group treatment in the office and in community settings in a stage-based treatment model that is non-confrontational, considers interactions of mental illness and substance abuse, and has client-determined goals.
• Coordinate with outside inpatient services to detoxify clients and establish linkage to self-help programs (e.g., Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics, Anonymous), and residential facilities.
• Participate in the provision of rehabilitation services.

Structuring Time and Employment

• Provide individual vocational-supportive counseling to enable clients to identify vocational strengths and problems, establish vocational or career goals and plans to reach them, and recognize and target symptoms of mental illness that interfere with work.
• Plan and provide work-related supportive services, such as assistance with grooming and personal hygiene, securing appropriate clothing, wake-up calls, and transportation.
• Teach job-seeking skills.
• Develop individualized jobs based on clients’ needs, abilities, and interests.
• Conduct on-the-job performance assessments and evaluations, regular work review session with clients and their employers, on-the-job support, and crisis-assistance contacts.
• Perform job coaching, problem solving, and support on and off the job site.
• Coordinate with state vocational rehabilitation and other employment services.
• Provide benefits counseling (e.g., SSI, veterans’ benefits).

Activity of Daily Living Services

• Provide ongoing assessment, problem solving, side-by-side services, skill training, supervision (e.g., prompts, assignments, monitoring, encouragement),…