Senior Social Worker

Company: Department of Veterans Affairs
Location: Fayetteville
Posted on: June 11, 2021

Job Description:

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Duties

Summary

The incumbent of this Senior Social Worker position will provide mental health services to Veterans with Substance Use Disorders within the Mental Health Service located at the VA Medical Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Incumbent independently performs the full range of professional social work services for a caseload consisting of predominantly highly complex cases. The incumbent requires specialized knowledge of psychiatric diagnoses, intervention, and treatment.

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Responsibilities

If you are NOT a current, permanent employee of the VA or another Federal Agency, then you should apply to announcement: CBST-1132921-21-AH.

Duties include but are not limited to:

• Provides specialized evidence-based treatment to Veterans enrolled in the Substance Use Disorder (SUD) service.
• Conducts a full range of biopsychosocial evaluation, mental status exams, basic psychological test administration, evidence-based individual, group & systems assessment, treatment planning, and psychotherapy.
• Provides high quality case management, advocacy, and coordination of linkages to other appropriate VA and community providers and/or agencies needed by the Veteran.
• Collaborates with an interdisciplinary team to provide needed services and ensures Veterans timely access to mental health and psychosocial services.
• Works predominantly with patient population which has highly complex social, medical, and mental health problems.
• Demonstrates skill in working with patients with co-occurring disorders including depression and bipolar disorder patients with characterological problems, patients with substance use disorders including dual-diagnosed patients, patients with legal issues (criminal, civil, traffic), and patients who are chronically homeless.
• Demonstrates an ability to expand clinical knowledge in the profession, provide consultation and guidance to colleagues, role model effective social work practice, teach or provide orientation to less experienced Social Workers.
• Develops innovations in practice interventions, and provides clinical supervision for social work licensure or certification.
• Represents the social work profession and perspective on an interdisciplinary team that may include other social workers, nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists, and other disciplines.
• Participates in program development within assigned program including community outreach.
• Participates in tracking the care of Veterans as they move through the treatment process, actively measures treatment outcomes using testing and other measures, and utilizes outcome evaluations to further treatment and design system changes based on empirical findings.
• Responsible for participating in clinical program development and is accountable to clinical program effectiveness and modification of service patterns.
• Works in conjunction with the other disciplines to partner in the care of Veterans with complex biopsychosocial needs.
• Independently identifies high-risk patients and provides safety planning, crisis intervention, coordinates staffing with other team members and/or family conferences when clinically indicated.

Work Schedule: Monday-Friday, 8:00AM-4:30PM.

Financial Disclosure Report: Not required.

Travel Required

Not required

Supervisory status

No

Promotion Potential

None

• Job family (Series)

0185 Social Work

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Requirements

Conditions of Employment

• You must be a U.S. Citizen to apply for this job
• Designated and/or random drug testing may be required
• Selective Service Registration is required for males born after 12/31/1959
• You may be required to serve a probationary period
• Subject to a background/security investigation
• Must be proficient in written and spoken English
• Selected applicants will be required to complete an online onboarding process

Qualifications

Basic Requirements:

• United States Citizenship: Non-citizens may only be appointed when it is not possible to recruit qualified citizens in accordance with VA Policy.
• Education. Have a master's degree in social work from a school of social work fully accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). Graduates of schools of social work that are in candidacy status do not meet this requirement until the School of Social Work is fully accredited. A doctoral degree in social work may not be substituted for the master's degree in social work. Verification of the degree can be made by going to http://www.cswe.org/Accreditation to verify that the social work degree meets the accreditation standards for a masters of social work.
• Licensure. Persons hired or reassigned to social worker positions in the GS-0185 series in VHA must be licensed or certified by a state to independently practice social work at the master's degree level.

May qualify based on being covered by the Grandfathering Provision as described in the VA Qualification Standard for this occupation (only applicable to current VHA employees who are in this occupation and meet the criteria).

Preferred Experience: Experience working with patients with substance use disorders.

Grade Determinations, GS-12:

(1) Experience/Education: The candidate must have at least two years of experience post advanced practice clinical licensure and should be in a specialized area of social work practice of which, one year must be equivalent to the GS-11 grade level. Senior social workers have experience that demonstrates possession of advanced practice skills and judgment. Senior social workers are experts in their specialized area of practice. Senior social workers may have certification or other post-masters training from a nationally recognized professional organization or university that includes a defined curriculum/course of study and internship or equivalent supervised professional experience in a specialty.

(2) Licensure/Certification: Senior social workers must be licensed or certified by a state at the advanced practice level which included an advanced generalist or clinical examination, unless they are grandfathered by the state in which they are licensed to practice at the advanced practice level (except for licenses issued in California, which administers its own clinical examination for advanced practice) and they must be able to provide supervision for licensure.

(3) Demonstrated Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities. In addition to the experience above, candidates must demonstrate all of the following KSAs:(KSAs must be clearly demonstrated in resume under description of duties in order to be found qualified for this position/grade level).

(a) Skill in a range of specialized interventions and treatment modalities used in specialty treatment programs or with special patient populations. This includes individual, group, and/or family counseling or psychotherapy and advanced level psychosocial and/or case management.

(b) Ability to incorporate complex multiple causation in differential diagnosis and treatment within approved clinical privileges or scope of practice.

(c) Knowledge in developing and implementing methods for measuring effectiveness of social work practice and services in the specialty area, utilizing outcome evaluations to improve treatment services and to design system changes.

(d) Ability to provide specialized consultation to colleagues and students on the psychosocial treatment of patients in the service delivery area, as well as role modeling effective social work practice skills.

(e) Ability to expand clinical knowledge in the social work profession, and to write policies, procedures, and/or practice guidelines pertaining to the service delivery area.

References: VA Handbook 5005/120, Part II Appendix G39, Social Worker Qualification Standard.

This vacancy is announced at the GS-12 level, above the Full Performance Level. The actual grade at which an applicant may be selected for this vacancy is GS-12.

Physical Requirements: The work is usually sedentary, but requires periods of walking, standing, bending, or climbing and employee may carry light items such as books, instruments, lap tops and other similar materials.

Education

IMPORTANT: A transcript must be submitted with your application if you are basing all or part of your qualifications on education.

Note: Only education or degrees recognized by the U.S. Department of Education from accredited colleges, universities, schools, or institutions may be used to qualify for Federal employment. You can verify your education here: http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/. If you are using foreign education to meet qualification requirements, you must send a Certificate of Foreign Equivalency with your transcript in order to receive credit for that education. For further information, visit: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ous/international/usnei/us/edlite-visitus-forrecog.html.

Keywords: Department of Veterans Affairs, Fayetteville , Senior Social Worker, Other , Fayetteville, Arkansas