WOW Counselor- Kansas City, MO

Are you looking for an exciting opportunity to mentor youth in the Kansas City area? Do you believe in serving the community? Do you enjoy helping youth connect the dots of life? If so, then working as a WOW Counselor at Youth Guidance might be the job for you! We have filled most of our positions, but are still looking for more outstanding talent to complete our team.

Take a moment to watch a video highlighting the impact of our Working on Womanhood (WOW) programs.

About Our Organization

Youth Guidance creates and implements school-based programs that enable children to overcome obstacles, focus on their education, and ultimately, to succeed in school and in life.  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 the 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.

Founded in 1924 and celebrating 100 years of impact this year, Youth Guidance is a leading provider of outcomes-driven programs serving more than 18,000 youth around the country.  For more information, visit www.youth-guidance.org.

School/District: Ruskin High School, Hickman Mills C-1 School District

Position Summary**:** Providing school-based group support and direct service to girls in 7th-12th grade to ensure they develop responsible decision-making skills, self-awareness, emotion management, self-acceptance, healthy relationships, and social awareness. The WOW Counselor will use their clinical expertise and youth engagement skills to empower the girls to become successful in school and life

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

• Facilitate 4-5 weekly group counseling sessions utilizing the WOW curriculum during the school day
• Provide clinical assessment for each client
• Provide individual counseling for WOW students
• Provide family and crisis intervention as needed
• Perform weekly required documentation and special administrative assignments
• Participate in WOW staff development and required curriculum trainings
• Provide all necessary functions to develop the WOW program using teacher trainings and school in service presentations
• Collaborate with School Counselors, Parent Programs, Behavioral Intervention Team
• Perform public relations assignments as requested
• Other duties assigned

Minimum Qualifications:

Education/Experience/Training

• A Master’s Degree in social work, counseling, or a related human service field from an approved accredited university is required.
• Two years of experience facilitating groups.
• Experience in Clinical and Youth Engagement
• Experience working with trauma-informed services and frameworks.
• Experience working in schools or youth-related systems, ie DCFS, juvenile detention, mental health facilities
• Bilingual/Spanish preferred, but not required

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

Leadership Core Competencies (Supervisor & above roles)

• Continuous improvement-minded:  Takes initiative to identify and execute strategies and processes to continuously improve one’s leadership to strengthen organization’s overall impact.​
• Develops and motivates others: Motivates others and supports their development through strong coaching and mentoring. Effectively stewards self and others through both small and large scale change**.** ​
• External representation and relationship building: Represents the organization among external stakeholders, and builds strong, trusting relationships with stakeholders​
• Leads with vision: Has an inspiring vision for the future of the organization, beyond the status quo, and communicates it effectively; leads with courage and willingness to take risks in service of impact​
• Manages with data: Understands data; analyzes data and identifies insights and implications​
• Strategic thinking and resource management:  Considers the future of the organization proactively and responsively; weighs diverse inputs to inform strategies; identifies innovative opportunities when relevant; makes and communicates decisions that effectively balance tradeoffs between financial sustainability and impact​
• Team building: Builds strong relationships with teams and colleagues; fosters effective teams and collaborative interactions​

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

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.

• This job operates in a professional office environment, school setting, and working with the public
• Occasional local and national travel

What Youth Guidance Offers:

We offer a robust package for eligible candidates including:

• Hiring Range of $48,000 - $72,000
• Youth Guidance offers a competitive benefit package for eligible full-time employees including the option to participate in medical, dental, and vision plans as well as short-term disability, life insurance, flex spending accounts, pet insurance, 401k, a wellness program and more. You may also quality for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).
• 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.
• Salary is determined based on the candidate's experience, education, and licensure (if applicable) LCSW, LMSW,LPC

DEIB Statement

At Youth Guidance, we understand that diversity, equity, inclusion and Belonging (DEI&B) are fundamental to realizing our vision of bright and successful futures for all young people. We celebrate the diversity of youth and staff 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 and staff are inequitable and unjust.

As such, we are committed to advancing DEIB 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, staff, and communities are impacted by, such as schools, organizational networks, governmental bodies, researchers, and the funding community, to apply approaches that embrace DEIB in addressing the needs and supporting the aspirations of young people and those around them.

Keywords

Youth GuidanceWOW CounselorKansas CityMOmentoryouthcommunitycounselingsocial workclinicaleducationtrauma-informedbilingualSpanish