Human Services Program Development Specialist

• Research best practices

The Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) is a social and human services agency whose mission is to successfully partner with families, caregivers, and the community to strengthen families, ensure safety, and achieve permanency for all Arizona’s children through prevention, services, and support.

Job Location:

3003 N Central Ave Phoenix, AZ 85012

Salary: $45,000 - $50,000 Salary

Grade: 20

Closing Date:
October 20, 2026

The Prevention Peer Advocate serves as a key contributor to strengthening child welfare prevention efforts, family support, and community partnership across the Department of Child Safety (DCS). This role is designed for parents with firsthand experience navigating the child protection system, bringing forward lived expertise to shape how DCS supports families, collaborates with partners, enhancing protective factors and advances statewide prevention strategies that help Arizona's children remain safely with their families.

This position requires statewide travel, and participation in events some nights and weekends.

• Participate in, but not limited to, policy discussions and strategic planning meetings, offering insights informed by lived experience, peer perspectives and current child welfare practice. Serves as a knowledgeable partner across the agency and statewide, helping teams understand prevention strategies and family support approaches can strengthen child safety and well-being statewide.
• Contributes to the development and maintenance of clear, accessible prevention materials for the Office of Prevention, including curriculum, prevention trainings, public awareness resources, and statewide initiatives such as the Parent Advisory Collaborative and Regional Child Abuse Prevention Councils.
• Plans, organizes, and implements prevention-centered learning opportunities and engagement activities, including conference workshops, annual trainings, parent collaboratives, community engagement events, and family-friendly activities. Through these efforts, strengthens the connection between families, communities, and agency partners, fostering environments where prevention, child protection, and family support efforts are understood, valued and effectively integrated.
• Other duties as assigned as related to the position.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities (KSAs):

• Child Welfare, Prevention and In-home Services
• Report Development
• Software applications including Microsoft Word, Excel and Power Point
• Interrelationships of public sector
• Partnerships and collaborations
• Program development

• Public speaking
• Training facilitation
• Written and verbal communication
• Contributing to social media to include virtual meeting platforms
• Coordinating with others
• Problem solving
• Utilizing various applications

• Plan, organize and implement prevention events, meetings and strategies
• Work as part of a team and collaborate with parents, community members and other state agencies
• Assist with development of presentations
• Research best practices
• Facilitate work groups

The ideal candidate will have 3-5 years experience as a parent peer advocate or with lived experience in child welfare systems. The candidate will demonstrate understanding of solution focused, system-level approaches to child welfare and prevention.

Employee must obtain and maintain clearance of the DCS Central Registry. A valid Arizona driver's license is required. Since this position requires driving or the use of a vehicle as an essential function of the job to conduct State business, then the following requirements apply:
Driver’s License Requirements. All newly hired State employees are subject to and must successfully complete the Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification Program (E-Verify).

The State of Arizona provides an excellent comprehensive benefits package including:

• Affordable medical, dental, life, and short-term disability insurance plans
• Top-ranked retirement and long-term disability plans
• 10 paid holidays per year
• Vacation time accrued at 4:00 hours bi-weekly for the first 3 years
• Sick time accrued at 3:42 hours bi-weekly
• Deferred compensation plan
• Wellness plans

Learn more about the Paid Parental Leave program here. For a complete list of benefits provided by The State of Arizona, please visit our benefits page

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