Job Summary
The overall responsibility of the A&P Officer is to conduct intake and reintegration assessments and facilitate admissions and reintegration of children.
Dimensions of the Role:
- Procedures, processes and applications support
- Systems support: Responsible for carrying out assessments
- Policies and procedures: Provide support towards the implementation of policies, procedures, and systems to support ministry operations and ensure compliance.
Responsibility of the Assessment and Placement Officer:
Assessments
Responsible for ensuring that at-risk children are assessed for best placement.
Admissions
- Responsible for coordinating admissions with the Department of Social Welfare, Tree of Life Administration, and transitional Facility Mothers.
- Facilitate the admission process at the residential facility.
- Work with Community and Family Strengthening officers on engaging parents and guardians on children admissions.
- Ensure caretaker consent is obtained
Reintegration
- Responsible for ensuring that all eligible children are informed about Reintegration, participate in the development of the care plan, family tracing, and post reintegration visits,Conduct reintegration assessments with Social Welfare.
- Work with Community and Family Strengthening Officers on assessing home situations.
- Ensure that the child is reintegrated into a safe home and environment.
Care Plan
- Work with ToL in developing care plans for all Tree of Life children.
- Update care plans provided by social welfare.
Family Tracing
- Trace primary guardians or alternative relatives for the children.
- Confer with the family in instances where the willingness and acceptance of the child becomes a problem.
- Strengthen the family by encouraging visitations and making regular contact with the caretaker.
- Find an alternative place for the child when tracing is not successful.
Post Reintegration
- Work with Community and Family Strengthening officers on conducting post-reintegration home visits.
- Plan and distribute the reintegration package.
- Work with Community and Family Strengthening Officers on implementing empowerment activities.
Communication & Reporting
- Communicate to relevant staff and stakeholders when a child is admitted, or is reintegrated; work in collaboration with the MDT Coordinator.
- Report regularly to the immediate department Supervisor and prepare weekly and monthly report.
Program support
- Engages Social Welfare on matters that concern Tree of Life.
- Conducts reintegration assessments.
- Participates in Tree of Life holiday release day.
- Works with Child monitoring on child admission recommendations.
Reporting:
Ensure reports are submitted on a weekly or monthly basis.
Skills Specific to the Post
- Demonstrate commitment to FL mission, vision, and values.
- Must have no previous convictions of harm to a child.
- Must have undergone training on Child Protection from Family Legacy.
- Share knowledge and experience.
- Actively work towards continuing personal learning and development and apply newly acquired skills.
- Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive constructive attitude.
- Demonstrates strong oral and written communication skills.
- Remains calm, in control, and good-humored even under pressure.
- Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities.
- Responds positively to critical feedback and offers points of view.
- Solicits feedback from co-workers about the impact of his/her behavior.
- Ability to network and be relational.
- Ability to work effectively with others on a team and be accountable for any decisions made.
- Adhere to deadlines
- Must have a valid class C driver’s license
- Exhibits and promotes Christian principles of servant leadership.
- Promotes innovation and learning amongst team members to achieve goals.
- Creates strong direction for own part of the organization to serve the needs in the overall Family Legacy context.
- Contributes effectively to the work of other departments and the ministry.
- Aware of own strengths, and weaknesses and proactive in using feedback for self-development.
- Aware of impact on others and uses impact to create a positive work environment.
- Positive about change and able to cope well with ambiguity and support others in doing so.
Educational Qualification and Experience
- Full Grade 12 certificate
- Diploma and/or Degree in Social Work or relevant social science.
- At least 3 years of work experience in the related field.
- Competency in computer skills (MS Word, Excel, etc)