Assessment and Placement Officer Family Legacy

Assessment and placement Officer

Location: Lusaka

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 willingness and acceptance of the child becomes a problem.
• Strengthen family by encouraging visitations and making regular contact with caretaker.
• Find 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)