BAM Youth Specialist

Are you a caring leader? Do you believe in serving the community? Do you enjoy helping youth connect the dots of life? If so, then working as a BAM Mentor at Youth Guidance might be the job for you! Youth Guidance creates and implements school-based programs that enable children to overcome obstacles, focus on their education, and, ultimately, succeed in school and in life.

Founded in 1924 today Youth Guidance is a leading provider of outcomes-driven programs serving more than 11,000 youth while touching the lives of more than 14,000 youth, parents, teachers, and community members.

What Youth Guidance offers:

We offer a robust package for eligible candidates including:

• Starting salary of $64,500.00
• A hiring bonus of $250 for part-time and $750 for full-time
• A retention bonus of $250 after 90 days of continuous service.
• A competitive benefit package. Even though healthcare costs have gone up, we have not passed along those increases to our staff.
• If you are pursuing your social services licensure, we can help you by providing licensure test study support. Licensing test reimbursement.
• Assistance in attaining licensure supervision hours.

Position Summary: Becoming A Man (BAM) Youth Specialists are responsible for guiding young men in grades 7 – 12 to learn, internalize, and practice social skills, make responsible decisions for their future, and become positive members of their school and community. BAM Youth Specialists do this by providing the young men with the mindsets, values, and abilities they need to develop into healthy, responsible young men and thrive.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

• Responsible for working in an individual capacity at their respective site as the primary point of contact and representative for BAM Los Angeles.
• Work in collaboration with the BAM Program Supervisor and school administration to recruit and build relationships with up to 60 school-based youth to participate in the BAM program.
• Lead and facilitate 4 – 5 weekly BAM groups during the school day, utilizing youth engagement, clinical counseling, and men’s rites of passage skills.
• Provide individualized support to all BAM participants, and provide individual, family, and crisis counseling sessions to students on an as-needed basis.
• Responsible for navigating spaces and establishing key relationships while sharing challenges and information with their program supervisor and the team at large.
• Participate in monthly staff development training and team meetings on the evidence-based BAM curriculum and other topics relevant to working with youth.
• Participate in supervision and coaching to ensure fidelity of program delivery.
• Document all interactions with youth, including group and individual case notes, clinical assessments, brief encounters, special events, program consents, pre/post surveys, and monthly program narratives based on program protocol.
• Work jointly with the Program Supervisor to manage an annual program budget to plan and execute field trips and special events for students throughout the school year and summer.
• Collaborate with school administration, teachers, and other Youth Guidance programs to provide, and participate in professional development sessions.
• Collaborate and/or coordinate services with the Local School Council, Youth Guidance Parent Family Engagement team, and school parent engagement team.
• Responsible for working in an individual capacity at their respective site as the
• Other duties as needed.

Minimum Qualifications:

Education/Experience/Training

• Bachelor’s degree from an approved accredited university and a minimum of two years of youth engagement experience.

• Master’s Degree in social work, counseling, or a related human service field from an approved accredited university and one year of youth engagement experience preferred.

• Minimum of two years experience providing supervised group counseling.

Skills/Abilities

• Completion of BAM curriculum training.
• Ability to commit to the continuous improvement of service quality and the organization’s mission.
• Ability to maintain positive relationships with various stakeholders.
• Succinct written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to function well in group and team settings.
• Ability to demonstrate interpersonal skills that excel in cultural sensitivity and respect for differences.
• Ability to pass criminal background and sex offender checks.
• Willingness to occasionally participate in youth sports activities.
• Proficient in the use of Microsoft Office products (Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint).
• Knowledge of advanced psychological concepts (e.g. CBT, Clinical Processing, Group Development) is preferred.

Core Competencies

• **Communication:**Uses effective written and oral communication with internal staff, teams, and community served; demonstrates empathy and listening
• **Client orientation:**Recognizes needs of diverse stakeholders and approaches relationships with a service orientation, to ultimately maximize the impact
• **Equity mindset:**Understands and is committed to goals of equity, consistently brings an equity mindset to the organization’s work and workplace
• **Growth mindset:**Views growth as important for personal and professional development; seeks out opportunities to expand skills, even if the change is required, demonstrates curiosity and eagerness to learn
• **Ownership and quality of work:**Effectively manages own work, and work of the team to ensure delivery of high-quality work
• **Supervisory skills:**Effectively manages and develops others
• **Mission drive:**Demonstrates commitment to the missing of the organization as a whole and alignment with organization values

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is required to stand for sustained periods of time, frequently talk, hear, use hands and fingers to feel, handle and operate objects or controls, and occasionally stand, bend, stoop, kneel and crouch
• The employee is required to have close visual acuity to perform an activity such as: preparing and analyzing data and figures, transcribing, and viewing a computer terminal
• The employee may occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• The duties performed are primarily in a school setting and working with the public, COVID-19 vaccination is required.
• Occasional need for local travel.

DEI Statement

At Youth Guidance, we understand that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) are fundamental to realizing our vision of bright and successful futures for all young people. We celebrate the diversity of youth and recognize them as empowered leaders, problem-solvers, and experts of their own experiences. At the same time, we acknowledge that many systems and institutions meant to support youth are inequitable and unjust.

As such, we are committed to advancing DE&I through our words and our actions, both internally and externally, by:

• Strengthening cultural competence as well as policies, practices, and organizational structures that foster belonging and leverage the unique backgrounds and talents of staff;
• Offering youth-centered programs that are accessible and responsive to people from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, abilities, sexual identity, gender identity and expression, language, and cultural and religious beliefs and practices;
• Influencing systems that youth, their families, and communities are impacted by, such as schools, organizational networks, governmental bodies, researchers, and the funding community, to apply approaches that embrace DEI in addressing the needs and supporting the aspirations of young people.