Clinician-Child First

Overview

Child First is an evidenced based, psychotherapeutic model that provides home-based assessment, family plan development, parent-child therapeutic intervention and education, and care coordination/case management for high risk families with pregnant people and/or children from birth to five years old, to decrease social-emotional and behavioral problems, developmental and learning problems, and abuse and neglect. This service uses a relationship-based approach that focuses on the primary attachment relationships of the young child and supports the parent, through its two-person service team, to enhance the family environment via protective, nurturing, and responsive interactions.

The Mental Health and Developmental Clinician partners with a Care Coordinator to support families served by Child First. The Clinician engages with both the caregiver and child in a supportive, reflective, and exploratory manner which fosters a protective, nurturing, and responsive caregiver-child relationship. The Clinician’s therapeutic intervention focuses on: healing from trauma; helping caregivers understand typical developmental challenges and expectations; increasing caregivers’ ability to reflect on the meaning and feelings motivating a child’s behavior;

supporting caregivers’ problem solving; and helping caregivers understand the psychodynamic relationship between parental feelings, history, and the caregiver response to the child. The Clinician can also provide consultation to teachers in early care and education settings, as needed. The best candidate for this position is highly organized, self-motivated, reliable, and flexible with an openness to learning, capacity for self-reflection, eagerness to participate in reflective clinical supervision, and desire to be part of a team.

• Engage with the family and the Care Coordinator in the collaborative family assessment process (i.e., gather information from interviews, observations of interactions and play, reviewed records, collateral sources, and standardized measures).
• Use all available information to develop a thoughtful, well-integrated clinical formulation and Child and Family Plan of Care, in partnership with the Care Coordinator and family.
• Provide Child First home-based psychotherapeutic intervention (non-manualized treatment) with young children and their caregivers using relational, dyadic psychotherapy and other modalities as appropriate.
• Help the caregiver gain insight regarding personal history (including trauma history), feelings for the child, and current parenting practices.
• Support crisis situations by assisting the family in times of urgent need (e.g., risk of harm to child or caregiver, pending child removal), in consultation with the Care Coordinator and Clinical Supervisor.
• Provide mental health and developmental assessment and consultation within early care and education settings and to other early childhood providers.
• Embrace use of videotaping to enhance both therapeutic work with families and reflective supervision.
• Engage in weekly individual, team, and group reflective clinical supervision with Clinical Supervisor.
• Engage actively in all aspects of the Child First Learning Collaborative, including in-person or live-remote training, distance learning curriculum, and specialty training.
• Track completion of all assessments and enter in the appropriate database.
• Keep all appropriate documentation for clinical accountability and reimbursement.
• Maintain schedule and complete tasks to achieve home visiting Benchmarks and meet Accreditation standards.
• Participate in other clinical and administrative activities as appropriate.

• Participate in supervision and case presentations.
• Provide resolution of problems arising during a crisis (on call rotation via cell phone).
• Collaborate with other service providers to assure continuity of care.
• Complete documentation within required time frames.
• Keep the Coordinator and Director apprised of all situations which involve the safety of any individuals in the program or community, to monitor the impact on the agency as…