HealthySteps Specialist / BH Clinician

Thank you for your interest in a career at NeighborHealth, formerly East Boston Neighborhood Health Center!

Everywhere you turn, you can feel the immeasurable level of enthusiasm here at NeighborHealth! We are one of the largest community health centers in the country, supporting the greater Boston area and focusing on the well-being of our patients and local community. From the nurses and physicians on the front line of patient care, to the managers who lead and guide our staff, to the many support roles that keep our facilities running smoothly - everyone plays a vital role in improving medicine for our patients.

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Time Type:

Full time

Department:

Mental Health

All Locations:

1601 Washington Street, East Boston

Position Summary:

The innovative HealthySteps approach is based on the most recent scientific understandings of how early childhood development works, and how it can best be supported to ensure individual, family, community, and societal well-being. NeighborHealth HealthySteps, a program of ZERO TO THREE, promotes nurturing caregiving, which supports families and improves healthy development and well-being of babies and toddlers, preparing them for school and life. NeighborHealth aims to achieve this goal by weaving together the expertise of a child development expert, the HealthySteps Specialist, and the pediatric primary care provider. Together, just at the time when the brain is developing most rapidly, these experts bring focus to the important skills needed for families to foster healthy child development and life-long well-being:

1. social emotional development;
2. language and literacy skills;
3. cognition skills; and
4. perceptual, motor and physical development.

The entire practice works together to implement the HealthySteps model, with leadership from a Practitioner Champion and the HealthySteps Specialist. The HealthySteps Specialist is an early child development expert who will join the pediatric primary care team at NeighborHealth to provide interventions, referrals, and follow-up for families with patients ages 0-3. The HealthySteps Specialist builds strong relationships with families and providers to increase the efficiency of the medical system and support team-based comprehensive care

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Establishes rapport and develops therapeutic relationships with patients of diverse backgrounds and varying levels of motivation for change.
• With supervision, renders accurate diagnoses utilizing the DSM IV.
• Writes up and presents completed assessments for clinical disposition in a clear and organized manner. Performs advanced, high quality, thorough psychosocial evaluation that contains data in support of the diagnosis, findings, recommendations and plans.
• Promotes HealthySteps within the practice to families and providers
• Conducts team-based well-child visits before, during, or following the primary care provider visits focused on monitoring development, social-emotional functioning, and relational health, and providing anticipatory guidance Note: The HealthySteps Specialist is expected to participate in team-based well-child visits in-person, as an integrated member of the care team.
• Conducts consultations on a short-term basis for needs regarding development and/or behavioral concerns such as sleep, positive parenting, picky eating, etc
• May facilitate parent/caregiver groups
• Creates and maintains community resource directory/database. Provides referrals and tracks follow-up, as appropriate, to help families make successful connections to key resources within the community.
• Screens for domestic violence, substance abuse and risk behaviors with every patient, applying protocols for intervention with positive screenings.
• Performs and documents outreach activities for patients who do not follow through, especially for those with known risk factors.
• Reaches out to community providers within first 6 months in position to share about HealthySteps, their role, and receive information to support referrals, warm handoffs, and ensure appropriate referral criteria is met.
• Participates (when appropriate) in community-wide early childhood and/or mental health meetings.