Family Support Specialist

Family Support Specialist

TN Voices

Responsibilities

• visiting families
• assessing needs
• developing plans

Requirements

• High school diploma

• Valid driver's license

• Auto insurance

• Family-support experience

• Strong communication and documentation skills

• Microsoft Office proficiency, and ability to conduct home visits and lift up to 50 pounds

• Job description

• Tennessee Voices Inc. is Tennessee’s collaborative leader in mental health and family well-being. Each year, we serve thousands of children, parents, and adults across all 95 counties with services that prevent crisis, heal trauma, and build long-term stability. Our model works because it’s whole-family, trauma-informed, and community-driven. By healing parents alongside their children, providing critical resources like housing and mental health support, and advocating for systemic change, TN Voices helps families thrive and communities grow stronger.

• Summary: Family Support Specialists (FSS) in the Healthy Families TN program are responsible for building trusting relationships with families and utilizing this connection to support families in identifying strengths and barriers, accessing resources, and obtaining the knowledge and skills to achieve their goals. FSSs are focused on the health and well-being of parents and their children, and they serve families individually in their homes and in group settings.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities:

• Responsible for fulfilling all duties related to emergency preparedness, evacuation, and client safety, including support of individuals who may not be capable of self-preservation, in accordance with TN Voices Employee Policies and TN State Department regulations and CARF Standards.
• Provides intensive, long-term home visiting services to parents according to Healthy Families of America (HFA) and Healthy Families Tennessee (HFT) guidelines
• Conduct family assessments and screenings, develop individual family service plans and provide brief interventions, solicit community referrals, advocate on behalf of families and follow-up as needed
• Prepares and implements individualized curriculum from available materials focusing on parent health and wellness, child health and development, positive parenting skills, educational and vocational achievement, and life skills
• Provides supportive services to participants, while also increasingly encouraging families to utilize more informal and community resources
• Maintains flexibility in order to schedule home visits at times that are convenient for the family
• Conducts outreach and regularly participate in engagement activities
• Maintains regular and reliable attendance while accurately recording and managing time keeping records to ensure seamless operations and contributions to team productivity
• Upholds and promotes the organization’s values, mission and ethical standards in all interactions and decision-making processes to foster and a positive and principled workplace culture
• Maintains an overall home visiting caseload as determined by HFT and contract guidelines
• Acquires and maintains Infant Mental Health Endorsement
• Keeps all documentation up-to-date and accurate, including electronic web-based records and paper records
• As a member of the team, plans, develops, and implements groups/activities/events at times that work best for program participants
• Participate in weekly reflective supervision, staff meetings, trainings, program evaluation activities, and workshops
• Assists with child abuse prevention month activities
• Participates in major fundraising events benefiting TNV, community awareness events that promote the agency and programs, and program activities of the organization no matter the individual role
• Represents the agency at community, civic or other public functions and attend quarterly site visits
• Participates in agency ad-hoc committees as appropriate and needed
• Perform additional duties as assigned by the supervisor or leadership.

Qualifications

• Experience working with or providing supportive services to young children and families
• Experience and humility to work with a culturally diverse population; Demonstrated acceptance of individual differences and practice of inclusion
• Ability to establish trusting relationships and utilize basic supportive skills
• Ability to approach families from a strengths-based and family-centered service model
• Knowledge of infant and child development and parent-child attachment principles
• Awareness of the needs of low-income and multi-stressed families
• Ability to learn and integrate new concepts into teaching/coaching, material related to service delivery
• Willingness to engage in building reflectiv