Senior Social Worker - HUD-VASH

About the role

The HUD-VASH Senior Social Worker incumbent functions as an independent social work provider, providing clinical interventions to homeless Veterans to help them in obtaining and maintaining permanent housing.

Responsibilities

• Interviews Clients and Conducts Psychosocial Assessments
• Interviews Veterans to establish facts about the Veteran's situation, presenting problems and the impact of such problems on the Veteran's functioning and health.
• Interprets and explains VA's treatment and benefit programs.
• Reviews all referral data from social workers, case managers, managed care staff and discharge planners to identify patients' needs.
• Makes a clinical assessment identifying the Veteran's needs and strengths.
• Serves Veterans who may be experiencing severe crises, lack family or an adequate community support, frequently fail to comply with instructions and treatment, or have significant deficits in coping skills and require continuing professional psychosocial support.
• Independently evaluates the Veteran's situation, including the Veteran's reaction and ability to deal with it, and arrives at a reasonable conclusion. Based on psychosocial assessment, professional judgment and advanced practice skills to make psychosocial diagnoses.
• Affords insight into serious and complicated cases involving illness involving psychiatric, medical conditions, dementia and other high-risk diagnoses. Makes independent professional decisions and recommendations for agency action.
• Finds a suitable means of treatment to help Veterans and/or significant others cope with stressful situations. Treatment is aimed at helping Veterans find practical solutions to problems.

Requirements

The Senior Social Worker has experience that demonstrates possession of advanced practice skills and judgment. At least two years should be in an area of specialized social work practice. The incumbent is licensed or certified by a state at the advanced practice level which included an ASWB advanced generalist or clinical examination, unless they are grandfathered by the state in which they are licensed to practice at the advance practice level. The Senior Social Worker 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.

Qualifications

• 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.
• You must be licensed or certified at the advanced practice level, and must be able to provide supervision for licensure.
• Demonstrate all the following KSAs: (1) 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. (2) Ability to incorporate complex multiple causations in differential diagnosis and treatment within approved clinical privileges or scope of practice. (3) 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. (4) 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. (5) 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.