Benefits and Eligibility Specialist Social Services Support: Family Discovery Specialist

Overview As a Family Discovery Specialist, you’ll take on an exciting and challenging role as a dedicated social services support specialist, focused on uncovering and strengthening family and supportive connections for youth in congregate care. Your mission is to lead the Discovery and Engagement process to find meaningful connections and open doors to permanency. You’ll use curiosity, persistence, and strong investigative skills to identify relatives and supportive individuals, break down barriers, and help ensure every child has the opportunity to return to their community and connect with people they know and trust. You’ll be part of a team tackling one of the most important and complex challenges in child welfare: ensuring no child remains in a group setting without a path to family connection. This is a powerful opportunity to make a lasting impact by helping youth find belonging, stability, and support. The Wyoming Department of Family Services work centers around three values: Safe at home; Giving families opportunities for success; and Supporting the people who support the families. Join the DFS family and support Wyoming families. Essential Functions Conduct deep-dive reviews of physical and electronic historical records to identify kinship, maternity and paternity links, and past connections. Utilize specialized tools (e.g., LexisNexis, Accurint, WhitePages) and social media platforms to locate current contact information and known associates for identified kin. Create visual family trees and Connectedness Maps to identify a minimum of 40 potential kinship connections for each youth. Maintain Diligent Search documentation to meet legal requirements and provide primary caseworkers with actionable contact lists. Assist the Department of Family Services in efforts to keep youth in their homes or return them to community-based placements. Preferences Associate's Degree and 1-2 years of progressive experience in Child and Family Services. Training in Kinship Care Practice regarding the use of genograms and eco-maps. Knowledge Customer Service and Communication: Verbal communication and empathy skills, necessary for engagement with a wide variety of individuals. Proficiency in professional, succinct written communication for drafting comprehensive Diligent Search documentation and presenting clear, actionable contact lists to primary caseworkers. Judgement and Decision Making: Sound judgment and discretion when discerning viable leads from complex, massive historical records and while utilizing specialized search tools and platforms. Ethical decision-making capacity regarding the appropriate handling and sharing of confidential and legally sensitive case file information. Cross Agency Collaboration: Ability to coordinate and align specialized search efforts with the objectives of primary caseworkers and multi-disciplinary teams to support community-based placements and permanency goals. Leadership: Strong capacity for self-directed work and initiative to autonomously manage the full scope of discovery and engagement of family and connections finding for a caseload of youth in congregate care. Accountability: Demonstrated commitment to meticulous, accurate record-keeping required for maintaining legally compliant diligent search documentation. Professionalism: Steady and professional composure when navigating sensitive family histories, dealing with complex emotional dynamics, and facing setbacks in the search for connections. Technical Proficiency: Skill in using databases like WYOSAFE. Skills in Google Suite and Microsoft. Experience in creating Genograms, Eco-maps, and Connectedness maps for identifying family structures and connections. Minimum Qualifications Education: Associate's Degree Experience: 0-2 years of progressive work experience (typically in Benefits and Eligibility) OR Education & Experience Substitution: 2-4 years of progressive work experience (typically in Benefits and Eligibility) Certificates, Licenses, Registrations: None Physical Working Conditions Typically, the employee may sit comfortably to perform the work; however, there may be some walking, standing, bending, carrying light items, driving an automobile, etc. Special physical demands are not required to perform the work. Occasional in-state travel may be required Notes FLSA: Non-Exempt All positions within the Department of Family Services will require a background information check, including the taking of fingerprints, which will be completed through the Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigation, the Department of Family Services, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for every successful applicant. #J-18808-Ljbffr