PSYCHIATRIC SOCIAL WORKER II/ EMERGENCY APPOINTMENTS HOMELESSNESS

Under the LA County Board of Supervisors’ emergency declaration for homelessness, the Department of Mental Health is urgently hiring Licensed Clinical Social Workers to help address housing, mental health, and substance-use crises in the community. Successful candidates may be appointed for an initial 90-day emergency period, with the opportunity to transition to permanent County employment based on a 100 % performance assessment.

Responsibilities

• Interview individuals, families, and/or significant others to obtain family, social, employment, medical, substance-abuse, and mental-health treatment histories.
• Assess client functioning in their environmental setting.
• Develop a Client Care Coordination Plan (CCCP) that may include individual, group, family, or marital counseling; case management; and/or referral to psychiatrists, psychologists, vocational or rehabilitation counselors, or other agencies.
• Determine duration of therapy, prioritize problems, select therapy methods, and modify treatment goals at successive intervals.
• Provide psychotherapy to individuals, groups, families, and significant others.
• Deliver case-management services to secure resources for clients, families, and significant others to achieve treatment goals.
• Assist clients, families, and significant others by discussing reactions and attitudes concerning mental-health problems and co-occurring substance-abuse disorders; explain the need for treatment and encourage cooperative problem-solving.
• Work with families and significant others to gain acceptance of and participation in treatment recommendations.
• Interview persons seeking psychiatric assistance on an emergency basis and use crisis-intervention techniques to prevent hospitalization and resolve emotional crises.
• Serve as a member of a mental-health emergency-intervention team and/or a joint law-enforcement/mental-health emergency-intervention team by evaluating behavior to determine if a person is, as a result of a mental disorder, dangerous to themselves, others, or gravely disabled.
• Initiate 72-hour detention applications at hospital facilities and, depending on the situation, schedule follow-up evaluations or make referrals to community treatment agencies.
• Participate in multi-disciplinary team conferences to discuss and evaluate client problems and progress.
• Participate in social-work student affiliate programs by assigning cases and providing technical instruction; assess and evaluate students’ progress and professional development.
• Provide in-service training to social-work staff and participate in mental-health training programs for medical students and allied-health students.
• Instruct community agencies on the use of mental-health principles to identify and treat mental-health problems.
• Participate in or conduct research to increase knowledge of mental-health problems and improve therapeutic treatment methods.
• Review treatment-authorization requests from hospitals, contracted network providers, and legal-entity community-based programs; recommend approval or denial based on state and Department of Mental Health contract-compliance requirements.

Requirements

• A valid and active license as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker issued by the California Department of Consumer Affairs, Board of Behavioral Sciences. (Applicants must attach a copy of the license with expiration date at the time of filing or within three days of application.)
• A valid California Class C Driver License or the ability to utilize an alternative method of transportation when needed to carry out job-related essential functions.

Physical Class II – Light: occasional light lifting to a 10-pound limit, some bending, stooping, or squatting, and considerable ambulation may be involved.