Youth Services Specialist I - Betty K. Marler - All Female Youth Services Center

Youth Services Specialist I - Betty K. Marler - All Female Youth Services Center

This position is a direct care/essential role that provides direct and engaging supervision of youth in the Division of Youth Services (DYS) state-operated secure facilities. Specific duties and expectations are: safety/security, youth center programming, documentation/recording, training, and organizational accountability. Positions may be required to work overtime on a rotating basis, based on business needs. Duties include but are not limited to the following:

Safety/Security: Work involves providing direct care, safety, security, and supervision of adjudicated and/or pre-adjudicated youth in a secure setting. Monitor, participate, support, and enforce behavioral management plans for individual youth as directed. Duties include supervision of youth or group of youth, supervision of daily activities, youth orientation, intervention in crisis situations, non-escalation, de-escalation, use of physical response/restraint in emergency situations, debriefing of all incidents, and conducting searches.

Youth Center Programming: Actively and with positive engagement, implement and follow the Youth Center's behavioral management program, teach, coach, and redirect youth within the program. Support DYS initiatives and strategies as they relate to youth programming and crisis intervention.

Documentation/Recording and Reporting: Document observations of youth behavior and response to program(s) and document all unit activities and required information in appropriate logs and records systems. Document all youth group activities in appropriate database systems.

Organizational Accountability: Through all communications and behaviors demonstrate, support, and contribute to a healthy, positive, and respectful cultural climate throughout the Youth Center by adhering to our organizational values of nonviolence, open communication, social responsibility, growth and change, social learning, democracy, and emotional intelligence.

Training: Complete DYS pre-service training academy, youth center training, and orientation process as a new employee. Some travel may be required. Complete all assigned online training, and maintain and support the Division's prevailing behavior management and intervention strategies.

Minimum qualifications: Education: High school diploma or General Education Diploma (GED). Substitutions: None. These positions are not sedentary positions. Employees are typically on their feet during the entire shift. Youth living quarters are located on multiple levels and employees must frequently climb stairs in the performance of job duties. Please take into account your physical ability in relation to the essential job duties when applying for a job. Employees must also be willing and able to physically intervene with assaultive youth. Preferred qualifications include college education in a behavioral health and/or juvenile justice-related field, experience working with adjudicated and/or detained youth within a secure residential facility and/or a behavioral health setting, experience facilitating psychoeducational groups, and education/experience working with adolescents who have trauma.

Highly desirable competencies include skilled conflict management, strong work ethic, integrity, and dependability, sound judgment and decision-making skills, self-control, composure, and the ability to manage stressful situations, and the ability to verbally communicate clearly and respectfully.