Peer Specialist

PURPOSE:

The Jewish Board’s Community Behavioral Health treatment programs provide compassionate, high quality, evidence-based services to individuals and families in the communities we serve.  Our staff use a culturally competent, person centered approach to help individuals and their families develop skills and resources to improve overall functioning, to instill hope, and to strengthen resiliency.  Our programs work closely with community partners to address health disparities in our neighborhoods while also celebrating the strengths and resilience of our communities.

POSITION OVERVIEW:

The Peer Specialist provides PROS program participants with supportive psychiatric rehabilitation services that facilitates their full integration into the community. The program aims to help each participant achieve their chosen life goal related to housing, work, education and/or building their socialization skills.  The services are provided using a recovery-oriented, person-centered, strengths-based approach with the goal of empowering individuals to improve their quality of life, achieve personal life goals as they take a more active role in their community.  The Peer Specialist will draw on their lived experience with mental illness to model the recovery process for program participants by supporting them to articulate their goals for recovery, learn and practice new skills and monitor their progress in effectively overcoming mental health barriers.  

KEY ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

• Provide concrete service delivery to clients as per program needs.
• Lead and co-lead a variety of recovery-oriented groups, especially on topics of self-advocacy, work and entitlements, daily living skills, independent housing skills, prepare participants for employment and support their ability to maintain employment
• Meet individually with participants as needed to provide additional support, facilitate problem-solving and implementation of tasks
• Communicate with collaterals and other agency staff to support consistent and effective service delivery
• Participate in team meetings, supervision, Initial Case Conferences and discharge planning meetings
• Complete all documentation for services provided, outreach efforts and collateral communications within program time-frames.
• Develop, implement, coordinate and monitor a range of client-centered activities
• Develop and maintain a Participants’ Resource Manual of community based recovery resources.
• Take a leading role with the Consumer Advisory Board to train, model and support program participants to develop and practice their own peer advocacy skills.
• May be assigned additional tasks and duties as needed for the program and participants’ service needs
• Ability to articulate the program’s philosophy, mission and goals to a varied audience via presentations and meeting participation.
• Demonstrate sound judgment and good decision-making skills to reasonably manage unexpected events
• Ability to effectively present information to clients and staff in verbal and written formats.
• Attend  trainings, meetings, case conferences
• Other duties as assigned

CORE COMPETENCIES for the position include:

• Ability to work within program guidelines with the support and guidance of a supervisor 
• Ability to recognize the need for confidentiality of information and to maintain such confidences
• Ability to travel independently using public transportation

EDUCATIONAL/TRAINING REQUIRED:

• GED/HS Diploma

EXPERIENCE REQUIRED/LANGUAGE PREFERENCE:

• Lived experience with a mental illness and recovery preferred
• Familiarity with NYS entitlements, OMH housing services and mental health services 

COMPUTER SKILLS REQUIRED:

• Experience working with electronic medical records and proficient with use of Microsoft Office

VISUAL AND MANUAL DEXIERITY:

• The candidate should be able to read paper and electronic documents and perform significant data entry into various computer programs.

WORK ENVIRONMENT/PHYSICAL EFFORT

• While the offices of the Jewish Board are accessible in accordance with the ADA, the sites to which staff may need to travel may or may not be.
• Risks/hazards associated with the position are those which may be encountered traveling around New York City