Job opening: Senior Social Worker
Salary: $90 669 - 117 866 per year
Published at: Feb 06 2024
Employment Type: Full-time
The Senior Social Worker/Community Engagement and Partnership Coordinator (CEPC) serves in a leadership role at the Chillicothe VAMC by working to create and support meaningful coalitions to work toward ending Veteran suicide. The CEPC serves as a content matter expert for suicide prevention and public health and facilitates integration of suicide prevention education throughout the community.
Duties
Duties include but are not limited to:
Education, Technical Assistance and Coalition Building
Serves as the Senior Social Worker / CEPC for a VISN 10 facility, reporting directly to the Director or Supervisor of Suicide Prevention at that facility.
Responsible for outreach and coalition-building aimed to promote evidence based practices in suicide prevention in the community.
The CEPC will work to deploy best practices which are evidence based into the community by engaging stakeholders in coalitions to support this shared mission.
Must be able to understand a wide variety of issues and policies in order to ensure program goals and objectives are met.
Successfully interface with individuals and groups with a wide variety of educational levels, socioeconomic backgrounds, divergent opinions, and priorities.
The incumbent has responsibilities that include, and skills that involve:
Assessing Veteran risk for suicide
Identifying appropriate clinical interventions for intervening to prevent suicide - and understanding that these may vary based on individual Veteran needs.
Be well versed in evidence based strategies for reducing suicide risk
Understand the difference between modifiable and non-modifiable (static) risk factors
Best Practices and Quality Improvement
The Senior Social Worker/CEPC is responsible for helping to diffuse best practices within the facility, and beyond the facility and into the community.
Attend all trainings and meetings assigned.
Coordinate with their home facility Suicide Prevention team to ensure all facility stake holders are well informed.
Work Schedule: Monday- Friday, 7:30 AM to 4:00 PM
Recruitment Incentive: Not Authorized
Telework: Available
Virtual: This is not a virtual position.
Functional Statement #:91181-A
Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not Authorized
Financial Disclosure Report: Not required
Qualifications
Applicants pending the completion of educational or certification/licensure requirements may be referred and tentatively selected but may not be hired until all requirements are met.
Basic Requirements:
United States Citizenship: Non-citizens may only be appointed when it is not possible to recruit qualified citizens in accordance with VA Policy.
English Language: In accordance with 38 U.S.C. 7402(d), no person shall serve in direct patient care positions unless they are proficient in basic written and spoken English.
Education: Master's degree in Social Work from a school of social work fully accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). Graduates of schools of social work that are in candidacy status do not meet this requirement until the school of social work is fully accredited. Note: A doctoral degree in Social Work may NOT be substituted for the master's degree in Social Work. Verification of the degree can be made by going to http://www.cswe.org/Accreditation to verify that the social work degree meets the accreditation standards for a masters of social work.
Licensure. Persons hired or reassigned to social worker positions in the GS-0185 series in VHA must be licensed or certified by a state to independently practice social work at the master's degree level. Current state requirements may be found by going to http://vaww.va.gov/OHRM/T38Hybrid/.
NOTE: If social workers covered under the grandfathering provision of the 1991Federal law regarding licensure or certification of VHA social workers leave the GS0185 social work series, they lose the grandfathering protection. If they choose to return at a later date to the GS-0185 series, they must be licensed or certified to qualify for employment as a social worker.
GRADE DETERMINATIONS.
In addition to the basic requirements for employment, the following criteria must be met when determining the grade of candidates.
Senior Social Worker, GS-12
(1) Experience and Education. The candidate must have at least two years of experience post advanced practice clinical licensure and should be in a specialized area of social work practice of which, one year must be equivalent to the GS-11 grade level. Senior social workers have experience that demonstrates possession of advanced practice skills and judgment. Senior social workers are experts in their specialized area of practice. Senior social workers may have certification or other post-masters training from a nationally recognized professional organization or university that includes a defined curriculum/course of study and internship or equivalent supervised professional experience in a specialty.
(2) Licensure/Certification. Senior social workers must be licensed or certified by a state at the advanced practice level which included an advanced generalist or clinical examination, unless they are grandfathered by the state in which they are licensed to practice at the advanced practice level (except for licenses issued in California, which administers its own clinical examination for advanced practice) and they must be able to provide supervision for licensure.
(3) Demonstrated Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities. In addition to the experience above, candidates must demonstrate all of the following KSAs:
(a) Skill in a range of specialized interventions and treatment modalities used in specialty treatment programs or with special patient populations. This includes individual, group, and/or family counseling or psychotherapy and advanced level psychosocial and/or case management.
(b) Ability to incorporate complex multiple causation in differential diagnosis and treatment within approved clinical privileges or scope of practice.
(c) Knowledge in developing and implementing methods for measuring effectiveness of social work practice and services in the specialty area, utilizing outcome evaluations to improve treatment services and to design system changes.
(d) Ability to provide specialized consultation to colleagues and students on the psychosocial treatment of patients in the service delivery area, as well as role modeling effective social work practice skills.
(e) Ability to expand clinical knowledge in the social work profession, and to write policies, procedures, and/or practice guidelines pertaining to the service delivery area.
(4) Assignments. For all assignments above the full performance level, the higher-level duties must consist of significant scope, complexity (difficulty), and variety and be performed by the incumbent at least 25% of the time. Senior social workers are licensed or certified to independently practice social work at an advanced level. Senior social workers typically practice in a major program area such as but not limited to: Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center or Polytrauma Network Site; a Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Center, or a national VHA referral center, such as a national Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or a national Transplant Center, or other program areas of equivalent scope and complexity. The senior social worker may be assigned administrative responsibility for clinical program development and is accountable for clinical program effectiveness and modification of service patterns. Assignments include clinical settings where they have limited access to onsite supervision such as CBOCs or satellite outpatient clinics. The senior social worker collaborates with the other members of the treatment team in the provision of comprehensive health care services to Veterans, ensures equity of access, service, and benefits to this population, ensures the care provided is of the highest quality. The senior social worker provides leadership, direction, orientation, coaching, in-service training, staff development, and continuing education programs for assigned social work staff. They serve on committees, work groups, and task forces at the facility, VISN and national level, or in the community as deemed appropriate by the supervisor, Social Work Executive or Chief of Social Work Services. This assignment is to be relatively few in number based on the size of the facility/service and applying sound position management. This assignment must represent substantial additional responsibility over and above that required at the full performance grade level and cannot be used as the full performance level of this occupation.
Reference: VA Regulations, specifically VA Handbook 5005, Part II, Appendix G-39 Social Worker Qualification Standard. This can be found in the local Human Resources Office.
The full performance level of this vacancy is GS-12.
Physical Requirements: Work will require walking, standing, bending and carrying light items in conjunction with travel and attendance at meetings and conferences away from the work site. The work is performed in an office setting with adequate lighting and other facilities with no unusual health hazards. The incumbent observes normal safety precautions. The incumbent must have a driver's license without restriction. This is necessary for ensuring attendance at face to face meetings.
Education
IMPORTANT: A transcript must be submitted with your application if you are basing all or part of your qualifications on education.
Note: Only education or degrees recognized by the U.S. Department of Education from accredited colleges, universities, schools, or institutions may be used to qualify for Federal employment. You can verify your education here:
http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/. If you are using foreign education to meet qualification requirements, you must send a Certificate of Foreign Equivalency with your transcript in order to receive credit for that education. For further information, visit:
https://sites.ed.gov/international/recognition-of-foreign-qualifications/.
Contacts
- Address Chillicothe VA Medical Center
17273 State Route 104
Chillicothe, OH 45601
US
- Name: Emily Chain Smith
- Phone: 740-253-9967
- Email: [email protected]
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