This senior social worker is assigned to Home Based Primary Care "HBPC" with responsibility to provide direct services for adult and geriatric veterans and their families. Due to the frontier nature of the service area and level of staffing the HBPC Senior Social Worker works in the community, traveling some distance alone to meet with Veterans enrolled in HBPC program.

Duties

Social Work: vacareers.va.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/Total-Rewards-of-a-Social-Worker-Career-Flyer.pdf Receives and completes consults from interdisciplinary teams and other social workers on complex, difficult cases, using advanced practice skills and expertise. Completes psychosocial assessments; interviews veteran and family members and/or significant others to establish facts about the veteran's unique situation; identifies presenting problems and their causes, and the impact of such problems on the veteran's functioning and health as a part of a comprehensive psychosocial assessment; assesses high risk factors, acuity and need for services. Develops an assessment of the veteran in collaboration with the interdisciplinary treatment teams, the veteran, family members and significant others, whenever possible. Develops psychosocial treatment plans in collaboration with the HBPC interdisciplinary team, including goals for psychosocial clinical treatment. Senior Social Workers provides independent consultation and makes recommendations to the interdisciplinary team regarding the course of treatment. Provides the patient, caregivers, and/or family members with ongoing supportive counseling. Participate in discharge planning with other disciplines and will be responsible for ensuring that discharge plans are executed in a manner that is timely and appropriate. Provides individual, family and group counseling as appropriate. Provides consultation/education to veterans and families on community resources, advance directives and VA benefits. Acts as a consultant to other team/staff members. Provides consultation/education to medical residents on social work practice and VA policy and procedure. Acts as liaison between VA and community resources, to include marketing and public relation duties as needed. Provide case management to veterans and families, as needed, throughout the continuum of care. Provide a full range of social work services within commonly accepted standards of social work practice which includes case work, individual, family and group counseling, discharge planning, case management and other services as appropriate. Address Advance Directives and Goals of Care Conversations in accordance with the standards of their work area. Provide wellness/prevention education and facilitate Patient/family support groups as appropriate. As appropriate, supervise the practice of social work students, or a less experienced social worker. Coordinate treatment and communicate with the care lines to facilitate continuity of care for veterans. Participate in committee assignments, as deemed necessary by the service manager. Maintain data and statistical compilations to comply with JCAHO, VA and medical center policy and procedures. Assist patients and their significant others with coping and dealing with the loss and grief experiences in disability, terminal illness and death. Document social work interventions and activities in patient's clinical record utilizing CPRS and ensure appropriate hand off when transferring of patient care. Completes Suicide Risk assessments and assists Veterans with developing Suicide Safety Plans, consults with and keeps the Suicide prevention Office informed as appropriate for Veterans considered at risk for Suicide. Acts as an advocate when it serves the best interest of the veteran/family. Advocate for the VA and identifies the need for services in specific geographical areas. Experienced in making rapid assessments and developing crisis management plans to maintain the veteran in a medical foster home. Ensures the interdisciplinary team is kept informed of any concerns with the patient and/or caregiver. Serves as the Social Worker for the HBPC Team completing assessments, meeting with veterans in their places of residence. Provides other professional services as assigned by the HBPC Program Director or designee. Administrative Responsibilities: The social worker enters all veteran/family contacts in the electronic record using appropriate formats and templates. The social worker establishes and maintains positive working relationships with employees, volunteers, consumers and stakeholders within the VA and outside community agencies. Social Work staff meetings, MHC staff meetings, other committees as appropriate, etc.) is necessary. The social worker will collaborate in the performance improvement processes and comply with performance measures as required by the VHA for the MHICM and for Social Work Service. Social Worker will attend all meetings (weekly interdisciplinary treatment team meetings, Social Work staff meetings, assigned committees, etc.) and perform other duties as required by HBPC/GEC Service Line. Work Schedule: Monday- Friday 7:30am-4:00pm Telework: AD-HOC Available Virtual: This is not a virtual position. Functional Statement #: 59360A Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not Authorized

Requirements

Qualifications

Basic Requirements: Citizenship. Be a citizen of the United States. (Non-citizens may be appointed when it is not possible to recruit qualified citizens in accordance with chapter 3, section A, paragraph 3g this part). Education. Have a 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. 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. Drivers License. Have a valid drivers license. GS-12, Senior Social Worker Experience/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. AND 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. AND 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 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: For more information on this qualification standard, please visit https://www.va.gov/ohrm/QualificationStandards/. Physical Requirements: See VA Directive and Handbook 501

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 Sheridan VA Health Care System 1898 Fort Road Sheridan, WY 82801 US
• Name: VISN 19 HR Contact Center
• Phone: 719-227-4600
• Email: [email protected]