Mental Health Consultant

**Job Description**:
**Our standard terms and conditions of employment include a work arrangement of being in the office 5 days a week. Kinark has recently introduced a new benefit that gives employees the opportunity to work their role in a hybrid or fully remote arrangement, as assessed for their position, for those who wish to opt-in for this benefit. **The role of Mental Health Consultant - Urgent Response Service has been positionally assessed in the ‘Remote Worker’ classification, defined as 0-1 days in office per week.**

Urgent Response Services (URS) is one element of the Ontario Autism Program (OAP) and is designed to respond rapidly to a specific identified need to prevent further escalation of risk of harm to a child or youth, other people or property based on the identification of key high-risk factors.

While the focus will be on providing the child/youth and their family with mental health focused consultation, the mental health consultant will also be expected to make appropriate linkages to children’s mental health services to provide more intensive or longer-term support to the child/youth.

**_Hourly rate range: $49.50-$51.44 per hour_**

**Duties and Responsibilities**:

- Assess nature and level of a child/youth’s mental health needs as well as strengths of the child/youth and family.
- Participate in the development of an inter-agency, inter-professional and cross-sectoral URS plan that addresses the single area of urgent need for the child/youth and family.
- Work with the child/youth and family to conduct risk assessments and to appropriately safety plan including providing consultation to support the plan to reduce and/or stabilize the identified high-risk behaviour.
- Provide brief intervention services as appropriate, to promote skill building and/or coping in alignment with service goal(s)
- Contribute to consensus building with other relevant disciplines, to refine and coordinate the delivery of the URS service elements.
- Ensure that planning for transition from URS is included in the plan and actively discussed with the child/youth and family.
- Provide mental health consultation that is effective, well-coordinated, family-centered and responsive to the child/youth and family’s needs.
- Participate in a wrap-around team-based approach in the development and implementation of the service response.
- When applicable, work collaboratively with other mental health professionals involved with the child/youth to ensure roles and responsibilities are clearly identified and implemented and transitions for families are as smooth as possible.
- Help families navigate mental health systems and making appropriate referrals and connections.
- Administer formal evaluation procedures to gather data on the impact of the URS intervention.

**Qualifications**:

- Master’s level education in social work or psychology and valid membership in the applicable regulated college
- Experience supporting children/youth on the autism spectrum including relevant intervention strategies and common co-existing conditions
- Experience collaborating with team members from multiple disciplines including but not limited to Applied Behaviour Analysis
- Strong assessment skills for identifying child, youth and family’s mental health strengths and needs across domains
- Exceptional interpersonal and relationship building skills
- Exceptional problem solving skills and solution focused communication skills that promote positive, productive and proactive dialogue that contributes to the successful implementation of the URS plan
- Exceptional conflict management and mediation skills to cultivate a team-based approach
- Ability to effectively support families experiencing significant emotional distress
- Ability to identify risk situations requiring prompt action
- Appropriate independence using strong judgement skills to access supervision as required
- Flexibility and adaptability to work within an evolving/changing system of service delivery
- Commitment to supporting diverse families in respectful and inclusive manner
- In depth knowledge of the broader service system for children and families, including crisis services and supports
- Computer literacy

**Kinark Child and Family Services conditions of employment include but are not limited to successful Criminal Record Check with Vulnerable Sector Screening, completed Pre-Employment Medical certificate, and proof of full vaccination.** Fully vaccinated is defined as having received all required doses of a World Health Organization Approved COVID-19 Vaccine and 14 days have passed since last dose. Proof of vaccination for each vaccine dose received is required.