Street Medicine ASW

Overview

Responsibilities

• Participates with street health team members in conducting street outreach, intake, and assessment for people living in homeless encampments.
• Conducts behavioral health assessments and triage, creates client-centered care plans and implements brief interventions and short-term counseling using appropriate modalities for patients with depression, anxiety, trauma, grief/loss, addiction, etc.
• Supports linkages and coordinated care with public and community-based mental health and substance use treatment systems.
• Provides intensive case management to a caseload of 25 clients, focused on linkage to health care, housing, and benefits.
• Assists with crisis intervention as needed and includes assessment, de-escalation, and notifying the public mental health crisis response team if necessary. Follow up on crisis intervention as appropriate.
• Participates in daily huddles, outreach and follow-up planning, and weekly case conferences, ensuring care coordination with medical providers and other interdisciplinary team members. 
• Maintains clinical and administrative records following contractual and billing requirements
• Consult with medical providers as needed.
• Follow all State of California mandated reporting requirements. 

Qualifications

• Ability to work flexibly and collaboratively in both non-traditional, street, and encampment settings and a fast-paced primary care clinic
• Must be an independent self-starter, balancing outreach, counseling, case management, and administrative tasks.
• Ability to work effectively with a multi-disciplinary team
• Demonstrated ability and sensitivity to working with a diverse staff and with a patient population from various ethnic, socioeconomic, age, education, lifestyle, and experiential backgrounds
• Excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills
• Computer literate in MS Office applications and willing to learn clinic systems.

Job Requirements

• Master’s degree in social work and be a registered ASW with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.
• Knowledge and experience providing mental health services to high-risk populations. 
• Familiarity with evidence-based practices for the treatment of depression and other mental disorders.
• Experience in clinical case management and harm reduction.

• Experience with homeless adults and/or adults with serious mental illness and substance use disorders.
• Access to use of personal vehicle and in possession of current license and insurance. 
• Lived experience relative to working with people experiencing homelessness (e.g., formerly homeless, social or behavioral health services consumer, criminal justice system involvement, foster care involvement, close family member of someone with these experiences)