Dcs Program Director - Policy Improvement Team - Grand East

Executive Service Background Check

This position requires a criminal background check. Therefore, you may be required to provide information about your criminal history in order to be considered for this position.

Department of Children's Services

Regional Policy and Practice

Knoxville, Oak Ridge, Cleveland, LaFollette, Tazewell, Jamestown, Lenoir City, Decatur, Athens, Madisonville, Wartburg, Benton, Kingston, Huntsville, Clinton, TN

Annual Salary: $89,496.00 - $

Closing Date: 09/15/2026

This position requires a criminal background check. Therefore, you may be required to provide information about your criminal history in order to be considered for this position.

This role is critical to advancing key DCS outcomes, maintaining quality performance standards, and supporting the continued implementation of Prevention to Permanency and A Home for Every Child.

The Program Director provides essential leadership and support by offering practice guidance and coaching to frontline professionals; engaging staff to identify programmatic needs and systemic barriers; building collaborative relationships with public, private, and community-based providers; and supporting policy, practice, and service delivery improvements.

This position also assists with regional meetings, work groups, special projects, case reviews, staff development, crisis intervention support, performance monitoring, and reporting on regional practice improvement efforts.

Graduation from an accredited college or university with a bachelor's degree and experience equivalent to seven years of professional work in one or a combination of the following:

• Counseling or Case Management services
• Program evaluation
• Education
• Auditing
• Accounting
• Business/process improvement

• Social services grant coordination
• At least five years of this experience must have been in:
• Children or juvenile services' program evaluation
• Case review work

• Process improvement (such as LEAN or Six Sigma certification) in any field listed above.

Pursuant to the State of Tennessee's Workplace Discrimination and Harassment policy, the State is firmly committed to the principle of fair and equal employment opportunities for its citizens and strives to protect the rights and opportunities of all people to seek, obtain, and hold employment without being subjected to illegal discrimination and harassment in the workplace.

It is the State's policy to provide an environment free of discrimination and harassment of an individual because of that person's race, color, national origin, age (40 and over), sex, pregnancy, religion, creed, disability, veteran's status or any other category protected by state and/or federal civil rights laws.