PARENT ADVOCATE

Regular Full Time – 35 hours per week – Salary: $45,000

About the role

The Parent Advocate will support parents with children in foster care to understand and navigate the foster care system, remain hopeful, and address family challenges so they can accomplish their goal of reunification. The Parent Advocate will work collaboratively with case planning units and support parents by lending their insights to the foster care agency decision-making process to expedite children being returned home. The role of the parent advocate is to help empower parents in the case planning process and provide options and choices for parents to make decisions for their families. Parents will draw upon their own lived experiences with the child welfare system to enable them to support those who are currently engaged in working toward reunification.

Responsibilities

• Build relationships and support parents in making decisions for their own families, coping with the trauma of foster care involvement
• Prepare parents and participate in Family Team Conferences to engage in service planning
• Share insights and observations to inform decision making regarding cases in their assigned unit
• Escort families to community-based services or appointments and conduct home visits to parents’ homes
• Offer emotional support to parents attending family court dates; orient parents to family time, offer visit coaching tips and periodically supervise family visits as needed
• Attend training and implement the Parents Empowering Parents (PEP) Model including key practices in the first 90 days of a case to orient parents to the service planning process
• Maintain appropriate documentation in Connections
• Attend all program and department meetings
• Perform other related tasks to support parents as needed
• Ability to maintain confidentiality and work flexible hours
• Other duties as assigned by Unit Supervisor, Assistant Vice President, and/or Sr. Vice President of Children and Family Services

Requirements

• High School diploma or equivalent required
• Bi-lingual (Spanish) preferred
• Previous life experience being impacted by the child welfare system as a parent, including having had a child placed in foster care or having had a court-ordered supervision case. Other child welfare involvement, such as having personally experienced a child welfare investigation, may also qualify. Previous child welfare cases must be closed for at least a year.

Physical Requirements

• Regularly required to effectively communicate
• Required to stand, walk, feel, and reach
• Occasionally required to sit and stoop, kneel, or crouch
• Must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds