Job Title: SOS Peer Specialist
Job Summary
The SOS (Safe Operations Support)Peer Specialist provides support and assistance to individuals experiencing homelessness based on their own lived experiences. They play a crucial role in building trust and rapport with program participants, offering empathy, understanding, and hope. Peers actively engage individuals in services, provide peer support, and share their personal journey of recovery.
They collaborate with the SOS team to deliver person-centered care and empower individuals to overcome challenges and achieve their goals. The team will follow street homeless individuals in the community to provide intensive outreach, engagement, and care coordination services. The role will require field-based work, on call coverage, and a willingness to work flexible hours.
Primary Duties & Responsibilities include, but are not limited to
- Conduct outreach to locate and engage street homeless individuals in need of immediate assistance.
- Build rapport and establish trusting relationships with individuals experiencing homelessness, providing support, empathy, and guidance.
- Connect individuals with available shelter or emergency housing resources, ensuring their safety and immediate needs are addressed.
- Collaborate with community partners, including shelters and housing providers, to facilitate access to appropriate services and resources.
- Engagement beginning either at known “hang-outs” or “Hot spots” within the transit system or during an inpatient hospital admission or emergency department visit with involvement in transition planning, including a needs assessment of community transition supports essential to stabilizing the participant;
- Outreach to communities, Street Outreach Teams, police, hospitals, providers, and community/family members and other caregivers to help identify individuals who would benefit from referral to a SOS CTI Team
- Individual sessions with participants emphasizing prevention and preparing for independent community living and the promotion of optimum mental and emotional health. May require helping participants deal with issues associated with but not limited to family and social relationships; stress and symptom management; activities of daily living; medication management; and housing readiness;
- Provide intensive emotional and practical support to participants as they transition back into their communities and into a supportive housing and/or living environment;
- Work with participants and their housing providers to resolve clinical issues that are impacting on the participant’s ability to obtain, manage, and retain supportive housing;
- Assist and instruct participants in attending to daily living skills such as personal hygiene, grooming and laundry, nutrition/meal preparation, budgeting, and socialization tasks and skills needed to successfully live and work in the community environments of their choice and also in maintaining a safe living environment;
- Foster and maintain cooperative and collaborative relationships with community providers and network members to facilitate connections or re-connections to services and supports;
- Community navigation including accompanying to first behavioral health and medical appointment, travel training, reengagement in community care, referral to services with ability to identify and address potential services and barriers to obtain and maintain such services;
- Establish collaborative working relationships with referring treatment teams and other partners and plan with them for appropriate discharges for participants;
- Advocate with and for program participants to achieve personal goals and address barriers such as fear, stigma and communication disparities with community providers and supports;
- Provide on-call after hour crisis intervention services when needed to participants and their support network, including respite referrals and other diversion and stabilization services;
- Attend and participate in team meetings and supervisory sessions;
- Respond to requests from SOS on Call line for individuals in need
- Develop short-term person-centered treatment plans to assist participant towards achieving their goals;
- Monitor and record participant’s progress and modify plan according to needs and preference;
- Perform various needs assessment for essential ongoing community integration and support;
- Timely and accurate documentation of participant information within Health Information Technology platform
- Comply with all required in-service training and staff development;
- Perform other related duties as assigned;
Qualifications/Criteria
- Past or current participant of behavioral health, substance services or homeless services preferred.
- Flexibility to work overnight hours, including weekends and holidays, as needed to ensure 24-hour coverage and support for the SOS program.
- Demonstrated ability to effectively use one’s personal story and role model recovery in a way that promotes personal growth and empowerment
- Knowledge of Behavioral Health systems, Mental health legislation and regulations, and health conditions
- Knowledge of homeless resources, NYC shelter systems, and MTA transit systems.
- Experience working with homeless and precariously housed populations.
- Ability to manage multiple projects and ask for help when needed
- Ability to participate on a team to accomplish tasks
- Ability to utilize strength-based and recovery-oriented approaches (I.eHarm reduction, motivational interviewing, trauma informed care)
- Serves as a role model to staff and stakeholders
- Ability to work with all stakeholders: participants, network, families, and government staff in a caring and respectful manner, and with due understanding of and consideration for cultural differences
- Knowledge of treatment, rehabilitation, and community support programs as they relate to members and their families
- Knowledge of Electronic health records for documentation
- Knowledge of techniques for identifying risk, including crisis management techniques.
*This position requires travel throughout the five boroughs of New York City.
Education
• Minimum High School Diploma or equivalent or higher.
New York State Certified Peer Specialist preferred or required Completion of an internship or comparable training in peer advocacy; experience in providing advocacy services to people who are mentally ill and/or homeless
Employment is contingent upon the successful completion of a background check and/or fingerprinting (department-dependent), which will be conducted following a conditional offer of employment in adherence to NYC Fair Chance Act guidelines.
