School Based Counselor

At Youth Guidance, we believe that no matter what challenges a young person faces, they are more likely to succeed when they have caring adults in their lives. Our highly-trained staff guides kids to overcome the life and academic challenges facing Chicago’s youth. We meet kids where they are — physically and emotionally — to help them focus on their education, make positive choices, and remain on the right path toward life success.

Position Summary: The Counselor provides individual, group, and family counseling and crisis intervention. The Counselor is responsible for rendering direct counseling and/or support services to clients within agency policies and programs. The Counselor participates within a team, helps formulate team programs, and works with school administration to ensure cohesive collaboration.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

• Develops counseling interventions and programs that meet client needs within the school community

• Provides clinical assessments for each client

• Provides individual counseling for clients in a school setting

• Provides family and crisis intervention as needed

• Participates in teacher training and school in-service presentations

• Performs weekly required documentation and special administrative assignments

• Participates in staff development and required training within Youth Guidance and assigned school(s)

• May include service provision in-home or community-based locations, as well as school-based services

• Collaborates with and/or coordinates services alongside school administrative and behavioral health teams

• Other duties as assigned

• Occasional travel may be required.

Minimum Qualifications

Education/Experience/Training

Required:

• Master’s degree in social work or a related human service field from an approved and accredited college/university

Strongly Preferred:

• Experience with youth engagement/positive youth development
• Experience with or strong understanding of trauma-informed services and framework
• Experience working in schools or youth-related systems, i.e. DCFS, juvenile detention, mental health facilities
• LSW, LCSW, LMFT, LCPC, or LPC licensure

Skills/Abilities

• Effectively communicates in verbal and written form
• Collaborates in team settings
• Works independently and with ownership of one’s work
• Demonstrates cultural competency, including an understanding of the effects of institutional racism and systemic oppression on marginalized populations
• Able to creatively engage youth
• Provides a positive, team-based approach to the treatment and care of clients
• Fluent in Spanish and English highly 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 the 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 essential functions.

• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is required to sit and 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 encounter while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.

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

What Youth Guidance offers:

We offer a robust package for eligible candidates including:

• A hiring incentive of $250 for part-time and $750 for full-time
• A retention incentive 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.

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.

Youth Guidance is an equal-opportunity employer and proudly values diversity. Youth Guidance does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law and is committed to creating a dynamic work environment that values diversity along all of these lines. People of all backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

EOE/M/F/D/V/SO