Program Officer

Job Description

THE SELECTED CANDIDATE WILL BE OFFERED A SALARY BETWEEN $84,981.00 - $97,728.00.

The Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) protects and promotes the safety and well-being of children and families through child welfare and juvenile justice services and community supports. ACS manages community-based supports and foster care services and provides subsidized childcare vouchers. ACS child protection staff respond to allegations of child maltreatment. In juvenile justice, ACS oversees detention, placement and programs for youth in the community.

Within ACS, the Division of Preventive Services (DPS) is a beacon of support to families by connecting them to community-based resources. The division works to provide resources that maintain the safety and wellbeing of families. DPS provides guidance and resources to our contracted providers that strengthen their ability to assess and address the service needs of families.

The Division of Prevention Services (DPS) and ACS are seeking an outstanding candidate to serve as a Program Officer for the Office of Program Management & Sustainability (OPMS) team. DPS and its network of contracted providers deliver community-based services across NYC to improve safety, wellbeing, and permanency for thousands of families each year. DPS focuses on system improvement, innovation, and strategy initiatives that require collaboration with major stakeholders to address urgent or emerging provider and family needs, city or state mandates, and high priority strategic goals of ACS leadership.

The Office of Program Management & Sustainability (OPMS) is committed to strengthening prevention services for children, families, and communities through collaborative program management and strategic initiatives that leverage innovation, data and research, and human-centered design. The team’s work seeks to enhance racial equity, incorporate multi-stakeholder voices, and elevate family choice. OPMS is charged with overseeing a coordinated implementation of evidence-based and research-informed prevention service models; designing a robust and consistent system to monitor and support programs’ sustained alignment to service model fidelity, contractual expectations, and ACS standards for service delivery; and partnering with contracted providers to ensure services are high quality and socially just, including the development of meaningful race equity plans at each provider agency. OPMS is seeking exceptional candidate to serve as a Program Officer on the team.


The role and responsibilities of Program Officers include, but are not limited to:

- Oversee the contract management functions for a portfolio of programs that include fiscal and programmatic activities. Program Officers are responsible for ongoing review and approval of program and model-purveyor budgets and invoices, providing program oversight and ongoing measurement of contract requirements. Ideal candidate will have excellent excel skills to support these functions.

- Support program development and management via quantitative and qualitative data collection. Leverage system-wide and program-specific data, monitor and assess outcomes of service delivery, conduct site visits, facilitate ongoing feedback and collaboration from families being served, and have ongoing collaboration with all stakeholders in alignment with sustainability derived from best practices and/or implementation science.

- Build strong understanding of prevention contract expectations, ACS standards for prevention service delivery, and service model fidelity to promote integration and coordination of high-quality services delivered to families and overall system performance in collaboration with external trainers and ACS’ Division of Policy, Planning, and Measurement (DPPM).

- Bring a racial equity and social justice lens to the work and help drive and support program initiatives that promote equity, accessibility, and economic mobility, ensuring families are at the center of all decision making.

- Prepare documents, make presentations, and facilitate goal-oriented meetings with key stakeholders to generate buy-in, improve the quality of families’ experiences and circumstances, and effectively manage projects and workstreams.

- Facilitate and manage learning cohorts among model developers and contracted provider staff implementing the same model in order to strengthen practice, address challenges, and share lessons learned.

- Represent DPS in internal and external working groups

Note: Multiple Program Officers are needed for various programs as described below. Selected candidates for Program Officer will be reporting to one of the Directors on Community Based Strategies who each oversee a portfolio of various prevention programs. Applicants will be considered based on their tailored resumes/cover lett