Family Participation Program Empowerment Practitioner

Posted: 01/10/2024

Closing Date: 01/11/2024

Job Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Chermside

Job Category: Community Services and Development

About us:

ATSICHS Brisbane is a not-for-profit community owned health and human services organization delivering on the unique health and wellbeing needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in greater Brisbane and Logan. We are the largest, most comprehensive Aboriginal Medical Health Service in Queensland, and Australia’s second oldest. We are determined to create a flourishing future and lasting legacy for our people and our community.

Our services include medical and dental clinics, mums and bubs programs, an aged care facility, family and child safety services, social and emotional wellbeing services, kindergarten programs and a youth service.

Our vision for the future is to deliver healthy, connected Indigenous urban communities.To do this we are focusing on five strategic priorities:

Champion healthy individuals and thriving families

As a key member of the ATSICHS Brisbane team, the Senior Family Participation Practitioner is expected to personally contribute to the shaping and achievement of ATSICHS vision and goals within their own scope. The Family Participation Empowerment Practitioner will provide three (3) Key Functions

Role Functions:

The Family Participation ‘Empowerment Practitioner’ will work with families involved in the statutory child protection system to reduce further statutory interventions and child removal by mitigating safety concerns raised by the Department of Child Safety using a Family Led Decision Making framework. The role is independent from Child Safety and works in partnership with families to reduce child safety concerns and help children remain safe in the family home. The role works heavily, but not solely, in the Investigation and Assessment (I&A) phase of the child safety continuum in reducing the disproportionate rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children involved with the statutory Child Protection system.

The Empowerment Practitioner will work with families (immediate and extended) to build their agency and empower their voices to be heard as part of understanding and addressing Child Safety worries and concerns. This is achieved by working closely with families to facilitate ownership of their present reality and an understanding of the potential impacts on their children, harness positive self-belief to change, facilitate a family-led plan (to overcome safety concerns) and empower the family’s voice to Child Safety in leading their change. The role does not make decisions for families. Instead the Empowerment Practitioner work to empower families to exercise their right to self-determination and make their own informed decisions by building a family’s acceptance of reality and readiness to enact change.

The Family Participation Empowerment Practitioner delivers brief counselling and targeted family intervention strategies that achieve the core family outcomes of the program, including:

Family Knowledge of Child Safety Processes: Build a family’s knowledge and understanding of the child safety system, including a clear awareness of the decisions and actions that may result in further child safety interventions, that is achieved through positive family interventions strategies, not fear.
Family Perception of Child Wellbeing & Safety: Improve a family’s perception and understanding of perceived safety, to make informed decisions that reduce the risk of ongoing child safety interventions, while also ensuring the safety and wellbeing of children.
Family Perception of Chid Safety Presented Concerns: Proactively influence and challenge the family’s perception of child safety worries that build a family’s personal insight and ownership of their issues and directly improves their motivation to change.
Family Led Decision Making: Build and facilitate a family’s ability to develop a family-led support plan to address child safety concerns with clear targets and timeframes.
Investigation and Assessment, Risk Mitigation: Identify and facilitate immediate supports for a family, based on the family-led plan that mitigates child safety concerns in the Investigation and Assessment (I&A) phase to reduce further statutory intervention, while meeting strict timelines.
Child Safety Legislative Timeframes: Build the capacity of families to meet child safety legislative timeframes, particularly in the Investigation and Assessment (I&A) phase, ensuring all case work meets quality practice standards.
Kin Placements: Identify and build alternative kin care placements, both as mitigating possible removal risk and actual placement, working closely to identify extended family prior to a child removal.
Voluntary Child Protection: Provide intensive support to families across the voluntary child protection continuum, including Intervention with Parental Agreement (IPA) and Service Support Case that support families to meet the safety and care needs of children with the aim of securing children living at home in a safe environment.

The role actively delivers one-to-one brief therapeutic mental health interventions, particularly focused around motivation/change readiness brief interventions, self-esteem practical supports (affirming strengths, facing fears, doubting doubt) and personal agency thinking (goal directed energy) brief interventions with the immediate and extended family.

Desired Skills and Experience

Qualification and/or Experience:

· Current Bachelor’s Degree, in Social Work, Human Services, Social Science, Health, Allied Health, Youth Work, Community Services, Family Intervention or Criminology with 2 years’ relevant experience in social services field

· Current Diploma in Community Services, Social Work, Human Services, Child and Family, Allied Health, Youth Work, Child and Family Intervention with 3 years’ relevant experience in social service field

AND

With at least 1 year of abovementioned experience in a case management role.

Skills and Knowledge:

· Demonstrated ability and comfortableness working in a performance driven environment to meet individual weekly, monthly and quarterly performance targets.

· Demonstrated ability to build client agency, self-efficacy and facilitate change through client empowerment, while actively discouraging client dependence on supports.

· Demonstrated knowledge and ability to provide brief behaviour change interventions that build client self-awareness and active change in achieving their identified goals.

· Demonstrated ability to work with the whole-of-family, irrespective of primary client, in meeting the totality of family needs.

· Demonstrated ability in coordinating multiple services in providing access to holistic care for clients, particularly integrating internal agency supports across multiple teams.

· Demonstrated knowledge and understanding of the factors contributing to vulnerability, disengagement, and intergenerational trauma of client group

· Experience with case management for high risk and/or crisis clients, with high-level planning and organisational skills.

· Knowledge of the supports available to target clients in the areas of mental health, substance misuse, education, employment and housing.

Additional Requirements:

· Requirement to travel across the Logan and/or Brisbane region, as per program location.

· Requirement to work outside core 9am-5pm business hours in meeting individual client needs and provide responsive care.

· Working with Children’s Card (Blue Card) or be eligible to apply

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Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Community Heal jobs

Family Participation Program Empowerment Practitioner