Program Officer

Program Officer

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 Family Services Division (FSD) and its network of contracted providers deliver one of the largest and most diverse continuums of community-based child welfare prevention services in the nation to improve the safety, well-being, and permanency for thousands of families and children each year. FSD focuses on systems improvement, innovation, and strategic initiatives that require collaboration with major community partners to address urgent or emerging provider and family needs, city or state mandates, and high-priority strategic goals of ACS leadership. The Office of Program Management and Sustainability (OPMS) manage many cross-functional projects that focus on program design and system sustainability. OPMS' initiatives include collaborating with service providers, legal, finance, procurement, compliance, systems, and operations, and developing strategies within the parameters of policy/regulations (city, state, and federal). The Program Design and Implementation (PDI) team within the Office of Program Management and Sustainability develops and implements strategies to ensure that the full continuum of prevention programs is implemented in alignment with model fidelity and in compliance with NYC child welfare requirements. The PDI team provides ongoing contract management and technical assistance support to providers and model purveyors. The PDI team holds monthly model cohort meetings to bring together providers and purveyors to discuss case practice challenges, program data, continuous quality improvement, and implementation of models and frameworks to fidelity. The team also hosts trainings and convenings for providers and ACS staff to learn about using data effectively to improve practice, discuss frameworks for effective implementation, and how to incorporate families' perspectives into service delivery. Additionally, the team holds monthly administrative meetings with each model purveyor to discuss case practice expectations between child welfare and model requirements.

The role and responsibilities of Program Officers include, but are not limited to:

• Oversee the contract management functions for a portfolio of programs that include fiscal and programmatic activities.
• Make recommendations concerning the provision of additional funding or adjustments of existing programs/contracts
• Support program development and management via quantitative and qualitative data collection.
• Build strong understanding of prevention contract expectations, ACS standards for prevention service delivery, and service model fidelity to promote integration and coordination of high-quality services delivered to families and overall system performance in collaboration with external trainers and ACS' Division of Policy, Planning, and Measurement (DPPM).
• Prepares summary reports on fiscal and programmatic concerns and directly monitor the contractor's performance and alignment to contract requirements
• Provide support to providers and contractors in developing more efficient/effective approaches to program administration.
• Provide technical assistance to contractors and providers to support reporting processes.
• Bring a racial equity and social justice lens to the work and help drive and support program initiatives that promote equity, accessibility, and economic mobility, ensuring families are at the center of all decision making.
• Prepare documents, make presentations, and facilitate goal-oriented meetings with key stakeholders to generate buy-in, improve the quality of families' experiences and circumstances, and effectively manage projects and workstreams.
• Facilitate and manage learning cohorts among model developers and contracted provider staff implementing the same model in order to strengthen practice, address challenges, and share lessons learned.
• Conduct site and field visits, engages community members to inform program planning, and builds relationships with providers, developers, front line staff, and internal/external stakeholders.
• Serve as lead to synthesize practice themes from all cohort and admin meetings, and fidelity reports to draft findings to share with division leadership and internal ACS teams.
• May supervise staff or interns on tasks and projects, as needed.
• May make recommendations concerning the provision of additional funding or adjustments of existing programs/contracts.
• Represent FSD in internal and external working groups.

Note: Multiple Program Officers are needed for various programs as described below.

Selected candidates for Program Officer will be reporting to one of the Directors on the Program Design and Implementation team who each oversee a portfolio of various prevention programs. Applicants will be considered based on their tailored resumes/cover letters to indicate interest and experience and/or expertise in one or more of the following:

• Early Childhood Initiatives: This is a priority initiative; ACS and DOHMH are partnering to support the development of a system of providers to offer support to families with children under 5 and who have child welfare involvement.
• Special Medical Prevention Programs serve families in which a parent and/or child have medical needs and strive to reduce safety factors and risk elements within the family, which, if left unaddressed, would warrant foster care placement.
• Family Treatment and Rehabilitation Programs (FT/R) are prevention programs that serves families where mental health and/or substance misuse are a primary concern and placing children at risk of foster care placement.

Minimum Qualifications:

1. A baccalaureate degree from an accredited college and two years of full-time satisfactory professional, technical or administrative experience in one or more of the following fields: program evaluation, contract negotiations/management, fiscal/financial management, or project management; or 2. A four year high school diploma, or its educational equivalent, and six years of full-time, satisfactory professional, technical or administrative work experience in one or more of the fields cited above; or 3. Education and/or experience equivalent to "1" or "2" above. College credits obtained from an accredited college may be substituted for experience on the basis of 30 college semester credits for one year of experience as described in "1" above. However, all candidate must have at least a four-year high school diploma or its educational equivalent and at least two years of full-time experience as described in "1" above.

Preferred Skills:

The successful candidate will have:

• Knowledge of child welfare, most especially prevention services
• Knowledge and interest in mental health, substance misuse, medical case management, intimate partner violence, resource coordination for people living in poverty, and/or developmental disabilities
• Ideal candidate is self-directed and proactive to identify gaps and can make recommendations for solutions
• Familiarity with reviewing and analyzing program budgets and invoices
• Experience in working with data and research to improve programs
• Experience delivering behavioral health interventions
• Must have excellent written and verbal communication skills, and produce high quality documents
• Professional and responsive in interactions with external stakeholders
• Ideal candidate is flexible, open to new ideas, and comfortable with iterative processes
• Consistently takes initiative to support other team members and peers an influential and empathetic leader who leads with humility to support staff
• Familiarity with human-centered design
• Successful communicator who is comfortable speaking in large, varied audiences
• Team player who is flexible, grounded, and mission-driven
• Skills: Experience with and comfortable using the following computer programs: Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Outlook, Excel, Teams, Power Point, Publisher, Visio, IE) Adobe Acrobat Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Forms, Chrome) Survey Monkey (or other survey program), Airtable

This position is also open to qualified persons with a disability who are eligible for the 55-a Program. Please indicate at the top of your resume and cover letter that you would like to be considered for the position through the 55-a Program.

As a prospective employee of the City of New York, you may be eligible for federal loan forgiveness programs and state repayment assistance programs. For more information, please visit the U.S. Department of Education's website at

New York City residency is generally required within 90 days of appointment. However, City Employees in certain titles who have worked for the City for 2 continuous years may also be eligible to reside in Nassau, Suffolk, Putnam, Westchester, Rockland, or Orange County. To determine if the residency requirement applies to you, please discuss with the agency representative at the time of interview.

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.