Job Description

Senior Social Worker (Emergency Department)

DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS

Veterans Health Administration

Summary

The position provides social work services to the Veteran population in the Emergency Department. This position will focus on psychosocial issues as they pertain to pre-admission screening and or interventions necessary to prevent a social admission or decrease the inpatient length of stay the due to pre-discharge assessment and planning for all Veterans treated through the Emergency Department.

This job is open to

The public

U.S. Citizens, Nationals or those who owe allegiance to the U.S.

Duties

Location: San Francisco, CA

Salary: $101,431 - $131,865 per year

Pay Scale & Grade: GS-12

Work Schedule: Monday through Friday, 2:00pm to 10:30pm
Telework: Not Available
Virtual: This is not a virtual position.
Functional Statement #: 000000
Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Authorized for highly qualified candidates
Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not Authorized
Financial Disclosure Report: Not required

Continuity of care is an essential role to assure patient safety, completion of assessment and referrals, firm hand-offs to inpatient providers and community resources will be an essential role in this position. The incumbent will work very closely with the inpatient social workers to provide warm hand-offs to assist in expediting discharges. Services consist of high quality assessment and intervention: assessment of coping in the community, assessment of suspected abuse, especially elder abuse and issues related to capacity; interventions such as counseling to patients and families around adjustment to disability, illness and loss; crisis intervention; advance directive education; coordination of linkages to other appropriate VA or community service providers/agencies; clinic-based, short-term, focused case management; and consultation to multidisciplinary team members on the psychosocial aspects of individualized patient care. The position will also assist with drop-in to the emergency department.

Duties of the position include, but are not limited to:

• performs specialized assessment and treatment of complex physical or mental illness, beginning with an assessment of the Veteran, in collaboration with the interdisciplinary treatment team, the Veteran, family members and significant others. The goal of the assessment is to highlight the Veteran's strengths, limitations, internal/external supports, and service needs, in order to optimize the Veteran's functional status, support patient coping in the community and identify the need for transition to higher levels of care when appropriate. The incumbent incorporates complex multiple causation in differential diagnosis and treatment of Veteran patients, including making psychosocial and psychiatric diagnoses within approved clinical privileges or scope of practice. Knowledge of the impact of illness on the medical treatment plan and the impact of medical treatment on psychosocial functioning are key and are individualized for each patient. When dementia or a progressive illness is an issue, assessment and intervention should include planning for money management, as well as future medical decision-making.
• Ability to address diminishing capacity, elder abuse, including self-neglect, and probate conservatorship.
• Adept at identifying indications for emergency support intervention and will follow up to link patient to these.
• Responsible for developing the treatment plan and setting achievable treatment goals with the Veteran/family.
• Able to multi-level complex interventions, according to the needs of the individual case.
• Utilize communication and intervention strategies to engage patients, especially aging patients (including those with dementia), to facilitate assessment and intervention, to encourage coping with change, and to identify and address caregiver support needs.
• Experienced in making rapid assessments of at-risk patients in the community and in recognizing opportunities to intervene to avert crisis or to identify immediate needs and respond to promote patient safety.
• Telephone triage calls require rapid assessment over the phone.
• Clinic-based, short-term, focused case management: Social worker will monitor coping at home and linkage to needed support in a timely fashion.
• Identify high users of the Emergency Room and with the multi-disciplinary teams and other sections/services input to develop a plan to reduce admissions and ER visits.
• Provide clinical interventions to all Veterans that present at the Emergency Room.
• Responsible for developing a working knowledge of pertinent VA and community social service programs and for enhancing working alliances with community contacts to the benefit of Veterans.
• Understands the operational systems of large service bureaucracies and will act as an advocate when it serves the best interest of the Veteran/family.
• Enter all Veteran/family contacts in the electronic record using appropriate formats and templates.
• Establish and maintain positive working relationships with employees, volunteers, consumers and stakeholders within the VA and at outside community agencies.
• Attend all appropriate clinic staff meetings and perform other duties as required.
• Serve as central Point of Contact for Social Work service regarding patient flow in the Emergency Department and through the admission process.

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Requirements

Conditions of Employment

• You must be a U.S. Citizen to apply for this job.
• Selective Service Registration is required for males born after 12/31/1959.
• Must be proficient in written and spoken English.
• You may be required to serve a probationary period.
• Subject to background/security investigation.
• Selected applicants will be required to complete an online onboarding process.
• Must pass pre-employment physical examination.
• Participation in the seasonal influenza vaccination program is a requirement for all Department of Veterans Affairs Health Care Personnel (HCP).
• Participation in the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination program is a requirement for all Veterans Health Administration Health Care Personnel (HCP) - See "Additional Information" below for details.

Qualifications

Applicants pending the completion of educational or certification/licensure requirements may be referred and tentatively selected but may not be hired until all requirements are met.

Basic Requirements:

• United States Citizenship: Non-citizens may only be appointed when it is not possible to recruit qualified citizens in accordance with VA Policy.
• Education: Have a master's degree in social work from a school of social work fully accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). Graduates of schools of social work that are in candidacy status do not meet this requirement until the School of Social Work is fully accredited. A doctoral degree in social work may not be substituted for the master's degree in social work. Verification of the degree can be made by going to http://www.cswe.org/Accreditation to verify that the social work degree meets the accreditation standards for a masters of social work.
• Licensure: Persons hired or reassigned to social worker positions in the GS-0185 series in VHA must be licensed or certified by a state to independently practice social work at the master's degree level. Current state requirements may be found by going to http://vaww.va.gov/OHRM/T38Hybrid/.
• English Language Proficiency: Candidates must be proficient in spoken and written English to be appointed as authorized by 38 U.S.C. § 7403(f).

May qualify based on being covered by the Grandfathering Provision as described in the VA Qualification Standard for this occupation (only applicable to current VHA employees who are in this occupation and meet the criteria). Grandfathering Provision: The following is the standard grandfathering policy for all title 38 hybrid qualification standards. Please carefully review the qualification standard to determine the specific education and/or licensure/certification/registration requirements that apply to this occupation.

• All persons employed in VHA in this occupation on the effective date of this qualification standard are considered to have met all qualification requirements for the title, series and grade held, including positive education and licensure or certification that are part of the basic requirements of the occupation. For employees who do not meet all of the basic requirements in this standard, but who met the qualifications applicable to the position at the time they were appointed to it, the following provisions apply:
• Such employees in an occupation that requires a licensure or certification, may be reassigned, promoted up to and including the full performance (journey) level, or changed to lower grade within the occupation, but may not be promoted beyond the journey level or placed in supervisory or managerial positions.
• Employees who are appointed on a temporary basis prior to the effective date of the qualification standard may not have their temporary appointment extended or be reappointed, on a temporary or permanent basis, until they fully meet the basic requirements of the standard.
• Employees initially grandfathered into this occupation, who subsequently obtain additional education and/or licensure/certification/registration that meet all of the basic requirements of this qualification standard must maintain the required credentials as a condition of employment in the occupation.
• If an employee who was retained in an occupation listed in 38 U.S.C. § 7401(3) under this provision leaves that occupation, the employee loses protected status and must meet the full VA qualification standard requirements in effect at the time of reentry to the occupation.

NOTE: If social workers covered under the grandfathering provision of the 1991 Federal law regarding licensure or certification of VHA social workers leave the GS-0185 social work series, they lose the grandfathering protection. If they choose to return at a later date to the GS-0185 series, they must be licensed or certified to qualify for employment as a social worker.

Grade Determinations: Senior Social Worker, GS-12

Experience/Education. The candidate must have at least two years of experience post advanced practice clinical licensure and should be in a specialized area of social work practice of which, one year must be equivalent to the GS-11 grade level. Senior social workers have experience that demonstrates possession of advanced practice skills and judgment. Senior social workers are experts in their specialized area of practice. Senior social workers may have certification or other post-masters training from a nationally recognized professional organization or university that includes a defined curriculum/course of study and internship or equivalent supervised professional experience in a specialty.

Licensure/Certification. Senior social workers must be licensed or certified by a state at the advanced practice level which included an advanced generalist or clinical examination, unless they are grandfathered by the state in which they are licensed to practice at the advanced practice level (except for licenses issued in California, which administers its own clinical examination for advanced practice) and they must be able to provide supervision for licensure.

Demonstrated Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities. In addition to the experience above, candidates must demonstrate all of the following KSAs:

1. Skill in a range of specialized interventions and treatment modalities used in specialty treatment programs or with special patient populations. This includes individual, group, and/or family counseling or psychotherapy and advanced level psychosocial and/or case management.

2. Ability to incorporate complex multiple causation in differential diagnosis and treatment within approved clinical privileges or scope of practice.

3. Knowledge in developing and implementing methods for measuring effectiveness of social work practice and services in the specialty area, utilizing outcome evaluations to improve treatment services and to design system changes.

4. Ability to provide specialized consultation to colleagues and students on the psychosocial treatment of patients in the service delivery area, as well as role modeling effective social work practice skills.

5. Ability to expand clinical knowledge in the social work profession, and to write policies, procedures, and/or practice guidelines pertaining to the service delivery area.

References: VA Handbook 5005, Part II, Appendix G39

The full performance level of this vacancy is GS-12. The actual grade at which an applicant may be selected for this vacancy is GS-12.

Physical Requirements: See VA Directive and Handbook 5019.

Education

IMPORTANT: A transcript must be submitted with your application if you are basing all or part of your qualifications on education.

Note: Only education or degrees recognized by the U.S. Department of Education from accredited colleges, universities, schools, or institutions may be used to qualify for Federal employment. You can verify your education here: http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/. If you are using foreign education to meet qualification requirements, you must send a Certificate of Foreign Equivalency with your transcript in order to receive credit for that education. For further information, visit: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ous/international/usnei/us/edlite-visitus-forrecog.html.

Additional information

Receiving Service Credit or Earning Annual (Vacation) Leave: Federal Employees earn annual leave at a rate (4, 6 or 8 hours per pay period) which is based on the number of years they have served as a Federal employee. Selected applicants may qualify for credit toward annual leave accrual, based on prior work experience or military service experience. This credited service can be used in determining the rate at which they earn annual leave. Such credit must be requested and approved prior to the appointment date and is not guaranteed.

This job opportunity announcement may be used to fill additional vacancies.

This position is in the Excepted Service and does not confer competitive status.

VA encourages persons with disabilities to apply. The health-related positions in VA are covered by Title 38, and are not covered by the Schedule A excepted appointment authority.

Pursuant to VHA Directive 1193.01, VHA health care personnel (HCP) are required to be fully vaccinatedagainst COVID-19 subject to such accommodations as required by law (i.e., medical, religious or pregnancy). VHA HCPs do not include remote workers who only infrequently enter VHA locations. If selected, you will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and submit documentation of proof of vaccination before your start date. The agency will provide additional information regarding what information or documentation will be needed and how you can request a legally required accommodation from this requirement using the reasonable accommodation process.

If you are unable to apply online or need to fax a document you do not have in electronic form, view the following link for information regarding an Alternate Application.

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: $101,431.00 - $131,865.00 per year

Benefits:

• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Retirement plan
• Vision insurance

Schedule:

• 8 hour shift
• Monday to Friday
• Night shift

Ability to commute/relocate:

• San Francisco, CA 94121: Reliably commute or planning to relocate before starting work (Required)

Experience:

• Social Work: 2 years (Required)

Work Location: In person

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