Service Description:

A Streetworker’s overall missions is: to connect those young people most overlooked to the services they may be in need of, work involves interviewing clients to identify problems, determining assistance needed, and referring them to the appropriate agency or field follow-up service. Responsibilities require considerable contact with young people between the ages of 13-23.

Specific Responsibilities

• Outreach: Design and implement an outreach plan to target specific groups of young people such as those out-of-school, DYS-involved, and/or gang-involved youth. Streetworkers will also provide trainings to other community providers on topics such as gang awareness and intervention
• Interviews teens to determine their needs and refers them appropriate community agencies and services
• Develops member assistance plans after a needs assessment oral interview and verifies their eligibility documents
• Acts as a liaison between teens and organizations and agencies
• Creates and updates manual and/or computer database member files by recording each contact made with teens and families, and maintains records required for follow-up
• Keeps current files of social services available to area residents and provides information about how to obtain the services
• Arranges services with providers as required by case plans
• Assists teens complete written applications for social services
• Recruits teens for the program by identifying recruitment sources, developing publicity materials, and distributing and posting recruitment flyers
• Provides emergency assistance, crisis intervention, and shelter assistance
• Assesses training needs of teens and families
• Demonstrates continuous effort to improve operations, decrease turnaround times, streamline work processes, and work cooperatively and jointly to provide quality seamless customer service
• Provide crisis intervention, intensive case management and follow-up services. Crisis intervention provided on a regular, 24/7 on-call basis
• Follow-up: Streetworkers provide intensive follow-up to a core group of young people in most need of services (i.e. phone calls, home visits, follow-up calls to their teachers, DYS caseworkers, or probation officers). Follow-up is essential when working with out-of-school, gang, or court-involved youth. Streeworkers are often contacting these youth to accompany them to trial, meet their lawyer, arrange a meeting with school administrators, or attend a case review at D.S.S.

Qualifications

• Ability to multi-task and adapt to changing environment
• Flexibility to work hours as program needs change
• Ability to provide own transportation
• Maintain confidentiality of records and information
• AA preferred/equivalent community experience accepted
• Bi-lingual/bi-cultural (Southeast Asian, Latina) preferred
• Significant experience working with young people
• Strong leadership, organizing & facilitation skills
• Strong comfort level in approaching teens in various different situations
• Ability to laugh at oneself is a must

Application Procedure:

It is preferred that all candidates both email resumes/cover letter to JuanCarlos Rivera, UTEC Streetworker Director, at juan@utec-lowell.org in addition to sending a hardcopy to: JuanCarlos Rivera, UTEC, 34 Hurd St., Lowell, MA, 01852. * Please indicate where you read about this particular opening (i.e. name of newspaper/internet site).

In order to expedite the internal sorting and reviewing process, please write "resume" and the position you are applying for as the only contents in the subject line of your e-mail (i.e. Resume - Office Administrator).