Senior Social Worker (Suicide Prevention Coordinator)

Duties

• Ensures that enhanced care and services, including intensified treatment, safety planning, and follow-up care for missed appointments, are provided for high-risk Veterans.
• Collaborates with treating clinicians to assess risk and provide guidance about criteria for Patient Record Flags Category I - High Risk for Suicide (HRS-PRF) placements and ensures that high-risk Veterans are receiving appropriate care following their HRS-PRF placements. This may include making personal contact with identified high-risk Veterans (e.g., letters, face-to-face, telephone).
• Offers consultations to treating clinicians to assist them with managing Veterans at high risk for suicide.
• Responds to referrals from staff members, the Veterans Crisis Line (VCL), and other touch points to ensure that at-risk Veterans immediately receive care and services.
• Performs mandated outreach and awareness activities as a member of the SPT to increase awareness of suicide prevention best practices and to improve the public's understanding and knowledge of suicide risk factors, military culture, lethal means safety and the accessibility of available resources, such as VCL.
• Fosters awareness of suicide prevention, interventions, and postvention through promoting safe messaging in partnership with the public affairs office through interviews and public events.
• Buils relationships and collaborating with state and local governments, health care systems, community organizations, and other public and private institutions, stakeholders, and partners for the enhancement of suicide prevention among Veterans, their families, and communities.
• Engages in educational activities including, but not limited to, dissemination of clinical practice guidelines, educational materials related to suicide prevention, training both clinical and nonclinical staff within VA to identify and respond to Veterans who are at increased risk for suicide and providing training to community organizations and staff who have contact with Veterans.
• Instructs VA health care providers how to report Veteran suicidal self-directed violence behaviors, including attempts, interrupted attempts, preparatory behaviors, deaths, and all self-directed violence behavior events of undetermined suicidal intent that occurred within 12 months of the date of notification.
• Serves as a facility subject matter expert (SME) and point of contact (POC) for matters related to suicide, including prevention, intervention, postvention efforts, education and outreach, and suicide behavior and death reporting; collaborate with other SPCs and VA at-large to share best practices through multiple touch points; and accurately document services rendered to improve the SPP overall.
• Ensures reporting mechanisms are implemented for all suicidal behaviors occurring within facility catchment areas; manage the Patient Record Flag Category 1 - High Risk for Suicide (HRS-PRF) process for all Veterans determined to be at a high risk for suicide; and review the nature of care provided using a combination of tracking and reporting tools.

Qualifications

• Basic Requirements:
• United States Citizenship: Non-citizens may only be appointed when it is not possible to recruit qualified citizens in accordance with VA Policy.
• English Language Proficiency. Candidates must be proficient in spoken and written English to be appointed as authorized by 38 U.S.C. § 7403(f).
• Education. 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. Verification of the degree can be made by going tohttp://www.cswe.org/Accreditation to verify that the social work degree meets the accreditation standards for a masters of social work.
• Licensure. Persons hired or reassigned to social worker positions in the GS-0185 series in VHA must be licensed or certified by a state to independently practice social work at the master's degree level.
• May qualify based on being covered by the Grandfathering Provision as described in the VA Qualification Standard for this occupation (only applicable to current VHA employees who are in this occupation and meet the criteria).
• Grade Determinations: In addition to the basic requirements for employment, the following criteria must be met:
• Senior Social Worker, GS-12
  • Experience/Education. The candidate must have at least two years of experience post advanced practice clinical licensure and should be in a specialized area of social work practice of which, one year must be equivalent to the GS-11 grade level. Senior social workers have experience that demonstrates possession of advanced practice skills and judgment. Senior social workers are experts in their specialized area of practice. Senior social workers 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.
  • Licensure/Certification. Senior social workers must be licensed or certified by a state at the advanced practice level which included an advanced generalist or clinical examination, unless they are grandfathered by the state in which they are licensed to practice at the advanced practice level (except for licenses issued in California, which administers its own clinical examination for advanced practice) and they must be able to provide supervision for licensure.
  • Demonstrated Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities. In addition to the experience above, candidates must demonstrate all of the following KSAs:
  • (a)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.
  • (b)Ability to incorporate complex multiple causation in differential diagnosis and treatment within approved clinical privileges or scope of practice.
  • (c)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.
  • (d)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.
  • (e)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.