Family Finding and Recruitment Specialist at Caritas Family Solutions

Alton, Illinois, United States -

Full Time

Start Date

Immediate

Expiry Date

26 Jan, 26

Salary

0.0

Posted On

28 Oct, 25

Experience

0 year(s) or above

Remote Job

Yes

Telecommute

Yes

Sponsor Visa

Skills

Family Finding, Recruitment, Research, Engagement, Data Analysis, Problem Solving, Communication, Team Collaboration, Trauma-Informed Care, Customer Service, Social Media, Networking, Documentation, Resource Development, Foster Care, Permanency Planning

Industry

Individual and Family Services

Description

Description At Caritas we believe every life deserves LOVE! If you agree, then please consider joining our team!! Caritas Family Solutions is seeking a creative, detailed oriented Family Finding and Recruitment Specialist to serve at our Alton office. This hybrid/remote position is perfect for passionate professionals who are highly organized and value being part of a great team. Most importantly, the work you’ll do helps misplaced children find loving homes! If you’re ready to change the world, please apply today!!! At Caritas, we know we’re competing with other employers for your services, and we want to win! It is our goal to offer competitive compensation and affordable benefits to all eligible employees. Caritas currently offers the following benefits to full-time employees: · 403 B Retirement Plan (5% Employer Match) · Generous Paid Time Off · Health, Dental and Vision Insurance Coverage · 12 Employer Paid State & Federal Holidays · Telehealth Services · Employer Paid Life Insurance · Health Saving Account · Employer Paid Short- & Long-Term Disability · Tuition Assistance Program · Real Work/Life Balance Remote Work: Allowed (work arrangement can change depending on performance and/or needs of Caritas). Description of Typical Work Schedule: 40 hour workweek; schedule to be discussed with direct supervisor and may change as needs of the department change (Hours set based on necessity of department or office.) PURPOSE: The Family Finding and Recruitment Specialist will support the foster care team by finding and engaging family members, recruiting and supporting new foster placements and engaging in the CFTM process as needed to stabilize youth and find/maintain family contact, placement stability and permanency for our youth. ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES include the following. Other duties may be assigned. Understands implicit bias and how to work within a system that impacts decisions for youth and their families when locating placement options. Has the ability to have crucial conversations with staff and other child and family team members. Conducts extensive research, investigation, and outreach in locating absentee parents/guardians. Identifies, locates and engages potential extended family/fictive kinship relationships. Provides professional technical assistance and resource development support to casework staff who serve children with specialized and problematic behavior service needs. Assists the family’s case manager with facilitating the expansion of resources needed to better serve children and their families involved in foster care. Drives to various locations to attend meetings, conferences, and to meet with families and potential placements as needed. Utilizes a family-centered, trauma-informed, strength-based, and DEI lens through which youth and family needs are assessed. Engages youth (as age-appropriate), birth parents, family and social connections, foster parents, and staff to facilitate and support stability and permanency for the youth. Possesses strong, creative problem-solving skills, and can use non-traditional search methods to identify and locate family members and supportive connections. Has strong data analysis skills needed to conduct diligent search activities across multiple databases, systems, social media, and other websites. Completes required forms and SACWIS documentation, send written correspondence, and log / track data for use by the foster care team. Uses ecomaps, genograms, and other tools to map and locate prospective supports and placement resources for the youth and family. Serves as a team member within the multidisciplinary team or Child and Family Team Meeting consisting of case manager, supervisor, foster parent, birth parents and youth to facilitate connections between newly found family/fictive kin members, supports, and other collateral resources to resolve complex and stalled cases to improve permanency outcomes. Assists the worker with completion of ICPC documentation as needed for out of state permanency options for children with relatives and licensed potential adoptive families. Possesses the ability to identify and engage familial supports and connections including relatives and fictive kin for the purpose of life-long connections and permanency achievement. Engages in a variety of techniques to meet and communicate with potential foster parents, including attending events, networking, social media, and other strategies. Collaborates with foster care and licensing staff to identify family and fictive kin placement options for youth when placement disrupts, when a youth needs placement after residential services, or when a youth’s goal changes to adoption if they’re not currently in an adoptive home. Utilizes evidence=based strategies and the agency’s data to engage both proactive general and targeted foster family recruitment efforts for youth in the foster care system. Targets recruitment efforts include specifically reaching out to potential families who are most likely to meet the needs for the specific youth. General recruitment efforts will include educating and engaging individuals and communities who meet the requirements to become licensed foster parents for the agency. Coordinates services and attends meetings with other agencies, systems and community providers to meet the needs of the clients. Completes and tracks family relationships and engagement, utilizing the 458-B In coordination with foster care case managers. Assists in prevention of placement disruption through early identification and support planning, acting as a liaison between the licensing unit and foster care case management teams. Understands the importance of family and fictive kin involvement in the lives of our youth and advocates for family placement when possible. Completes spreadsheets identifying family and fictive kin supports for each new family to assist with concurrent planning and emergency placement needs. Requirements QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS: To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE REQUIRED/PREFERRED Degree/Field Required: Bachelor's Degree in Human Service (Related fields will be considered.) Degree/Field Preferred: Bachelor's Degree in Human Service, Criminal Justice, or Communications (Related fields will be considered.) Additional Fields of Knowledge Important for the Role: Communications and Media — Knowledge of media production, communication, and dissemination techniques and methods. This includes alternative ways to inform and entertain via written, oral, and visual media. Customer and Personal Service — Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction. Psychology — Knowledge of human behavior and performance; individual differences in ability, personality, and interests; learning and motivation; psychological research methods; and the assessment and treatment of behavioral and affective disorders. Sales and Marketing — Knowledge of principles and methods for showing, promoting, and selling products or services. This includes marketing strategy and tactics, product demonstration, sales techniques, and sales control systems. Sociology and Anthropology — Knowledge of group behavior and dynamics, societal trends and influences, human migrations, ethnicity, cultures, and their history and origins. . Experience Required: Entry level; no experience required (For positions that manage staff, the years specified need to be progressive years of management experience. For all positions, the years required can be interchanged with equivalent experience from an advanced degree related to this job and/or with other relevant experience verified by applicant/incumbent). Licenses/Certifications Required: None Licenses/Certifications Preferred: CWEL SKILLS REQUIRED Manager-specific: N/A Basic: Active Learning — Understand the implications of new information for both current and future problem-solving and decision-making. Active Listening — Give full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times. Critical Thinking — Use logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions, or approaches to problems. Learning Strategies — Select and using training/instructional methods and procedures appropriate for the situation when learning or teaching new things. Mathematics — Use mathematics to solve problems. Monitoring — Monitor/Assess performance of yourself, other individuals, or organizations to make improvements or take corrective action. Reading Comprehension — Understand written sentences and paragraphs in work-related documents. Speaking — Talk to others to convey information effectively. Writing — Communicate effectively in writing as appropriate for the needs of the audience. Language — Able to read and write in English. Social: Coordination — Adjust actions in relation to others' actions. Instructing — Teach others how to do something. Negotiation — Bring others together and trying to reconcile differences. Persuasion — Persuade others to change their minds or behavior. Service Orientation — Look for ways to help people. Social Perceptiveness — Be aware of others' reactions and understanding why they react as they do. Problem Solving/Decision-making: Complex Problem Solving — Identify complex problems and review related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions. Systems Analysis — Determine how a system should work and how changes in conditions, operations, and the environment will affect outcomes. Systems Evaluation — Identify measures or indicators of system performance and the actions needed to improve or correct performance, relative to the goals of the system. Resource Management: Management of Financial Resources — Determine how money will be spent to get the work done, and accounting for these expenditures. Personal Time Management — Manage one's own time and the time of others. Technical: Quality Control Analysis — Conduct tests and inspections of products, services, or processes to evaluate quality or performance. Technology Design — Generate or adapt equipment and technology to serve user needs. Trauma-informed: Must display a willingness to adopt trauma informed interventions, principles, and practices as well as commitment to ongoing development of their capacity for application of trauma informed care. Realizes the prevalence of trauma among persons served by Caritas and the general population. Recognizes how trauma affects everyone involved-including clients, their families, staff, and community; and impacts behaviors. Responds to trauma by actively implementing the guiding principles of trauma informed care into their daily practice. Resists re-traumatization of persons served and staff providing services, by creating safe, welcoming, and supportive environments. Proficient Computer Skills In: Excel, Outlook, Word, Database Management Software Social Media Platforms Person search software, Teams, Zoom Expert Computer Skills In: Excel, Outlook, Word, Database Management Software Social Media Platforms Person Search software, Teams, Zoom MENTAL EFFORT/COGNITIVE ABILITIES REQUIRED: Deductive Reasoning — Apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense. Fluency of Ideas — Come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity). Inductive Reasoning — Combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events). Information Ordering — Arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations). Memory — Remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures. Performance of job tasks rely on memorization of tasks or sequences of events. Consider amount and type of information. Oral Comprehension — Listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences. Oral Expression — Communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand. Problem Sensitivity — Tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem. Written Comprehension — Read and understand information and ideas presented in writing. Written Expression — Communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand. PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS: Light work. Exert up to 20 pounds of force occasionally, and/or up to 10 pounds of force frequently, and/or a negligible amount of force constantly to move objects. If the use of arm and/or leg controls requires exertion of forces greater than that for sedentary work and the worker sits most of the time, the job is rated for light work. PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES REQUIRED: Fingering/Grasping — Pick, pinch, type or otherwise work, primarily with fingers rather than with the whole hand as in handling. Applying pressure to an object with the fingers and palm. Feeling — Perceive attributes of objects, such as size, shape, temperature or texture by touching with skin, particularly that of fingertips. Walking — Move about on foot to accomplish tasks, particularly for long distances or moving from one work site to another. Sitting — Particularly for sustained periods of time. Speech Clarity/Talking — Express or exchange ideas by means of the spoken word. Those activities in which they must convey detailed or important spoken instructions to other workers accurately, loudly, or quickly. Includes the ability to understand the speech of another person. Hearing — Perceive the nature of sounds at normal speaking levels with or without correction. Ability to receive detailed information through oral communication, and to make the discriminations in sound. Repetitive motion — Substantial movements (motions) of the wrists, hands, and/or fingers. Coordination, including eye/hand, hand/feet. VISUAL ACUITY: The worker is required to have visual acuity to determine the accuracy, neatness, and thoroughness of the work assigned or to make general observations of facilities or structures. WORK CONTEXT/ENVIRONMENT: The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. This position is based primarily in an office environment. Subject to both environmental conditions. Activities occur inside and outside.Subject to an environment working in a vehicle. Subject to vibration — Exposure to oscillating movements of the extremities or whole body. Other PPE Required: N/A VEHICLE RELATED REQUIREMENTS: Access to reliable transportation to get to/from work: Required. Access to a reliable automobile: Required. Must provide proof of auto liability insurance (and continue to while working in this position): Required. Must possess a valid driver's license: Required. Additional license requirements that are necessary: N/A Additional considerations for this position: N/A Drug Free Workplace: Caritas Family Solutions is dedicated to maintaining a safe, healthy, and productive environment for our clients and employees. As part of this, a strict drug-free workplace policy is maintained.

Responsibilities

The Family Finding and Recruitment Specialist will support the foster care team by locating and engaging family members and recruiting new foster placements. This role involves extensive research and outreach to stabilize youth and maintain family contact.