Family Engagement Specialist
Position Summary
The Family Engagement Specialist under the direction of the Associate Executive Director is responsible for ensuring families receive necessary services to support their children's health, development, school readiness, and early school success. Responsibilities include case management, crisis intervention, community outreach, resource and referral information, enrollment duties, and facilitating orientation meetings.
Essential Functions
- Plan, direct, and manage family engagement activities for the Learning Center program.
- Coordinate efforts to enhance family resource services.
- Build relationships with families and professionals specializing in family involvement/engagement.
- Assist with enrollment duties, conduct family appointments, and ensure completion of required paperwork.
- Facilitate orientation meetings with parents, encouraging their participation in the Learning Center program.
- Assist parents in identifying their families' strengths and needs, setting family goals, and encouraging them to meet these needs.
- Act as an advocate for parents, providing appropriate referrals for services through partnerships with service providers for counseling, health and dental care, and emergency assistance or intervention.
- Coordinate and encourage parent participation in leadership groups, parent meetings, as program volunteers, and opportunities to be involved in the CPPI (Foundations For Success) Steering Committee.
- Participate as an active team member in interdisciplinary planning for children and families, and other cross-component coordination.
- Identify family strengths and plan/advocate around family goals.
- Attend mandatory meetings and trainings.
- Ensure all admission/enrollment requirements are met for each student.
- Build relationships and collaborate with other community agencies.
- Advocate with and on behalf of low-income, diverse families.
- Maintain accurate written and computerized reports in a confidential manner.
- Participate actively in all data collection processes.
- Achieve and maintain compliance with grant guidelines and scope of work.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in early education, social work, or related field, with 3-5 years’ experience in working with families with young children.
- Compliance with health requirements for staff according to EEC regulation 7.09(11).
- Ability to work with a diverse population and exhibit core YMCA values of caring, honesty, respect, and responsibility.
- Training in trauma-informed care is preferred but not required.
- Training in child and family engagement is preferred but not required.
- Bilingual skills in both English & Spanish are required.
- Excellent relationship building skills.
- Must have, or be willing to earn, and maintain First Aid and CPR training.
Work Environment & Physical Demands
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is required to sit, stand or reach for extended periods of times, move around the work environment independently, push, pull or lift up to 25 pounds for short periods of time. Employee is exposed to noise and fluctuating temperatures.