Family Advocate

Family Advocate

The family advocate creates, provides, and coordinates services and activities with families and communities that foster strength, healthy living, and overall well-being. They also provide support in a case management style and act as a liaison between families, staff, the community, and other family-related services. The family advocate encourages all family members to become advocates for their children and family.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Complete and manage all necessary documents for enrollment.
• Recruitment, Enrollment, and Orientation: Assist in planning and executing recruitment, enrollment, and orientation services. Adhere to the annual timeline for timely recruitment and enrollment as distributed by the Family Services Unit. Achieve and maintain enrollment goals, ensuring a waiting list of eligible children is always available. Track and report recruitment activities monthly. Consistently meet NCPK enrollment targets. Note: Failure to meet timely enrollment targets may affect job performance evaluations.
• Student Attendance: Orient families to the program according to policy and procedure. Record daily student attendance. Follow up on student absences to ensure at least 90% monthly attendance.
• Home visit: Conduct home visits and contact the family as needed or required by agency plans and procedures.
• Collaboration: Work closely with Teachers, Center Directors, Family Service Specialists and other content areas to coordinate services for children and parents.
• Emergency Assistance: Provide support to families in crisis situations, including making referrals to community agencies and following up to ensure services are delivered promptly and effectively.
• Confidentiality: Maintain strict adherence to program and client confidentiality policies.
• Supervision Participation: Engage in reflective supervision opportunities with your supervisor.
• Child Abuse/Neglect Reporting: Report any suspected cases to the Center Director and follow the appropriate procedures.
• Data Management: Ensure timely and accurate entry of all family and child data from application to ongoing enrollment in the HS/EHS program. Document all required actions and events in ChildPlus daily, including applications, routine family contacts, referrals, follow-ups, and health information.
• Professional Communication: Communicate empathetically while maintaining professional boundaries, respecting parents as their child's primary teacher.
• Meeting Participation: Attend meetings to coordinate services for children and families, ensuring timely and accurate documentation in ChildPlus.
• Family Needs Follow-Up: Address identified family needs, and document information in ChildPlus.
• Parent Training Coordination: Facilitate parent/guardian involvement in the program. Plan and coordinate with parent committee on required parent meeting topics.
• Record Keeping: Maintain comprehensive and confidential records for your assigned caseload. Ensure all records are up to date.
• Parent Committee Support: Facilitate monthly Center Parent Committee meetings with the Center Director and Committee Chairperson. Submit meeting agendas, minutes, sign-in sheets, and handouts to the Center Director.
• Transportation Arrangements: Assist with arranging transportation for parents to health services and other program-related activities as needed.
• Health and Dental Exams: Ensure each child has a current physical and dental exam upon enrollment. Keep all health, dental, and other required screenings, and assessments up to date through regular follow-ups.
• Form Submission: Upload copies of required forms to ChildPlus and maintain up-to-date records of children's health, dental, and other assessments.
• File Maintenance: Share the responsibility of maintaining accurate files by filing, data entry in ChildPlus, and developing solutions to emerging challenges.
• Transition Support: Assist families through transitions, including entry into HS/EHS and kindergarten.
• Additional Duties: Perform other job-related tasks as assigned by your supervisor.

Essential Qualifications

• AA Degree or bachelor's Degree in social work, human services, family services, counseling, or related field.
• 1 year case management experience preferred; bi-lingual skills preferred.
• Experience in Social Service area or related field through internship or volunteer experience.
• Demonstrated ability to exhibit professional attitudes to staff, families and children and ability to carry out responsibilities with a minimum of supervision.
• Demonstrated excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability to work collaboratively and harmoniously with others to address needs and concerns.
• Availability of automobiles during working hours and a valid driver's license and insured.
• Be will to complete the Family Service Credential within a year of being hired.

Physical, Mental and/or Visual Demands

• Must be able to sit and stand for extended periods of time throughout the day.
• Must be able to lift up to 35 lbs.
• Must be able to bend and stoop.
• Must be able to walk extended periods throughout the day monitoring.
• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is exposed to weather conditions prevalent at the time. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.
• Specific vision abilities required by the job include close, distance, color, peripheral depth and the ability to adjust focus.
• GenerationEd is committed to provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified individuals, including those with disabilities in accordance with ADA.

This job description describes the general nature and level of work performed by the individual assigned to this position and should not be interpreted as all inclusive. It does not state or imply that these are the only duties and responsibilities assigned to the position. The employee may be required to perform other job-related duties. All requirements are subject to change and to possible modification to reasonably accommodate individuals with a disability.