Early Childhood Development Specialist: Healthy Steps Specialist

Job Summary

The HealthySteps Specialist is an early child development expert who will join the pediatric primary care team to provide interventions, referrals, and follow-up for families with patients ages 0-3. The role promotes healthy steps within the practice, conducts team-based well-child visits, provides consultations, maintains a family support line, and facilitates parent/caregiver groups.

Responsibilities

• Promotes HealthySteps within the practice to families and providers
• Conducts team-based well-child visits before, during, or following the primary care provider; visits focus on monitoring development, social-emotional functioning, and relational health, and providing anticipatory guidance
• Conducts consultations on a short-term basis for needs regarding development and/or behavioral concerns such as sleep, positive parenting, picky eating, etc.
• Maintains a family support line and responds to and tracks call requests within the designated response time
• Participates in reflective supervision meetings
• May conduct home visits and may accompany families to key medical, specialty, and community agency appointments as needed
• Facilitates parent/caregiver groups
• Creates and maintains community resource directory/database
• Provides referrals and tracks follow-up, as appropriate, to help families make successful connections to key resources within the community
• Reaches out to community providers within first 6 months in position to share about HealthySteps, their role, and receive information to support referrals, warm handoffs, and ensure appropriate referral criteria is met
• Participates (when appropriate) in community-wide early childhood and/or mental health meetings
• Works as an active member of the HS Implementation Team and attends regular team meetings
• Engages in Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) initiatives to ensure the HealthySteps model is delivered with fidelity
• Collaborates with HealthySteps implementation team to implement all eight Core Components including universal screenings, making positive parenting and early learning guidance information available, and adjusting workflows for optimal efficiency
• Works closely with pediatric primary providers around care coordination, goal setting, coaching, and education about key aspects of a child’s development
• Provides consultation and/or facilitates training to medical professionals and all practice staff re early childhood development, early relational health/infant early childhood mental health, and trauma-informed practice
• Maintains open communication with all members of the primary care team
• Documents all patient clinical activity and care coordination in EHR
• Tracks caseload to ensure capacity to deliver the HS services within the risk stratified service delivery model

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in psychology, social work, counseling, early childhood education, or related field
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Commitment to working with underserved populations in a community setting
• Empathic, supportive, and patient
• Strong motivational interviewing skills
• Ability to take initiative and a willingness to learn
• Ability to collect and enter data for program management, evaluation, and reporting purposes

Benefits

Essen Health Care is committed to providing a competitive salary and benefits package. The HealthySteps Specialist's salary range is $75,000 - $80,000.

Pay

$75,000 - $80,000

Schedule

N/A