Crisis Outreach Specialist

Job Type

Full-time

Days Off:
Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Shift: Swing (3:00pm - 1:30am)

Shift Differential: $0.50 per hour

Insurance Benefits:
Dental, Life, Long-term Disability, Medical (no premiums/payroll deductions for employee coverage)

Other Benefits:
Employee Assistance Program (EAP), Flexible Spending Account (FSA), ORCA card subsidy, Paid Time Off (34 days per year), Retirement Plan

Union Representation:
This position is a part of a union and is represented by SEIU Healthcare 1199NW.

Recognized nationally as an innovator and leader in developing solutions to homelessness, DESC is a social services organization, supportive housing operator, and licensed behavioral health treatment provider focused on meeting the needs of people experiencing long-term homelessness and living with complex behavioral health and other medical conditions. Approximately 3,000 people are actively receiving services from DESC at any given point in time.

Our vision is a community where all people are shown compassion, treated with dignity, and everyone has a safe, stable, and affordable place to call home.

DESC operates five shelter/emergency housing programs, 19 permanent supportive housing facilities with over 1,750 units, several hundred additional scattered site apartments, and a range of behavioral health services including outpatient mental health and substance use disorder treatment, residential crisis stabilization, street outreach, mobile crisis response, and treatment for opioid use disorder.

The Mobile Rapid Response Crisis Team (MRRCT or “Meerkat”) at DESC, is a county funded program responsible for addressing the imminent and emergent needs of community members in crisis, in the central region of King County primarily covering the entirety of Seattle. The DESC team has been providing mobile crisis response services to the community for well over a decade.

As a nonprofit with over 45 years of experience focused on serving our community’s adults living with long histories of homelessness, behavioral health, and other disabling conditions, DESC is uniquely positioned to connect people in crisis to the important support and survival services they may need to overcome and prevent future occurrences of crisis, behavioral health distress, or other instabilities in our community.

As a member of DESC's Mobile Rapid Response Crisis Team, you will be on the front lines responding to adults in the community experiencing mental health or substance use crises, as dispatched to us by Crisis Connections (988). You will work in a team alongside other skilled colleagues, including Mental Health Professionals and Certified Peer Counselors. Once called into action, teams of two will assist individuals responding to wherever they are in the community in identifying appropriate therapeutic options and next steps to resolve their crisis, while avoiding unnecessary usage of emergency rooms or other non-therapeutic settings like jail.

We are working to stop the trend of criminalizing mental health disabilities and homelessness, and we want to make sure individuals in crisis get the help they need. Following our initial interaction, our teams will also follow up to ensure recommended service connections have been made to prevent future crisis events. The team works all throughout the central region of King County, primarily Seattle, in a wide variety of community settings every day throughout the year, and in all types of weather.

• In response to and cooperation with Crisis Connections and other referents (such as police, fire, medics), perform timely outreach services to individuals needing crisis intervention services, assessment, referral, and linkage to needed services.
• As a member of a multi-disciplinary team, conduct meaningful engagement to provide observation for multi-axial assessments, and substance use disorder assessments.
• Engage in crisis intervention, stabilization, and related activities.
• Establish and implement a plan to successfully engage clients in relevant services and other resources.
• As needed, provide…