Kingship Specialist Navigator

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.

The Division of Child Protection focus is to continue to leverage several strategies to effectuate the reduction of pre-placement when out of home care is critically essential to the safety of a child(ren) by improving overall efficiencies with the placement process. ACS is committed to ensuring every child requiring a protective removal will be potentially placed with a family caregiver. In an effort to ensure Family finding is firmly embedded in The Division of Child Protection Practice, the Division along with program partner FTC intends to centralize the function of Kin finding. The kinship Specialist teams primary responsibility will be to explore familial and fictive kin resources to achieve permanency for both pre-Placement and Borough-initiated kinship placements. Improving foster care assignments for kinship caregivers will lead to safety and stability children.

The Office of Family Team Conferencing Kinship Support Services at the Nicholas Scoppetta Children’s Center primary function is to is to help the children and families served by ACS after hours staff in the borough offices and the emergency units that work nights and weekends to place children on an emergency basis. Pre-Placement (Children’s Center, Youth Reception Centers, and Sheltering Arms Reception Center) operate 24/7 to provide critical services for children and youth in foster care. The Kinship Specialists unit will focus on finding kin resources through exploration of familial and fictive kin resources to help expedite and support placement and permanency for children and youth in Pre-Placement settings. The Child Protective Kinship Community Associate will be responsible for, but not limited to the following:

- Maintains liaison with various stakeholders by obtaining and conveying information and providing feedback to facilitate cooperation and coordination of services.
- Prepares reports by utilizing information obtained from kinship assignments, activity sheets, records or reports, to provide a written record of unit actions, findings, and recommendations.
- Assists supervisor with gathering data from staff to enter in the Kinship Practice Log Spreadsheet
- Responds to requests for help from staff, by researching files, documents, solutions database, to provide requested information and support. Addresses basic requests and escalates complex requests to the appropriate parties. Logs in all requests and problem resolutions.
- Coordinates the work related to follow-up on incomplete, pending applications and/or referrals, by providing direction, requesting and reviewing additional information, to enhance achievement of community services/ project objectives
- Assists with other duties to support the CC Kinship Team as needed

COMMUNITY ASSOCIATE - 56057

Qualification Requirements
1. High school graduation or equivalent and three years of experience in community work or community centered activities in an area related to duties described above; or
2. Education and/or experience which is equivalent to "1" above.

The City of New York is an inclusive equal opportunity employer committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and providing a work environment that is free from discrimination and harassment based upon any legally protected status or protected characteristic, including but not limited to an individual's sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, veteran status, gender identity, or pregnancy.