The Senior Social Worker provides clinical psychosocial services at an advanced practice level to eligible veterans and their family members. Veteran patients are primarily from the Chillicothe catchment areas and services are provided at the assigned site (Chillicothe VA). The Social Worker is a leading force for the complete care of Veterans and is required to interface as necessary with the patient, significant others, community agencies, and other staff. 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. English Language Proficiency. In accordance with 38 U.S.C. 7402(d), no person shall serve in direct patient care positions unless they are proficient in basic written and spoken English. 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. Note: 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/. NOTE: If social workers covered under the grandfathering provision of the 1991Federal law regarding licensure or certification of VHA social workers leave the GS0185 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. In addition to the basic requirements for employment, the following criteria must be met when determining the grade of candidates. Senior Social Worker, GS-12 (1) Experience and 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. (2) 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. (3) Demonstrated Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities. In addition to the experience above, candidates must demonstrate all of the following KSAs: (a) 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. (b) Ability to incorporate complex multiple causation in differential diagnosis and treatment within approved clinical privileges or scope of practice. (c) 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. (d) 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. (e) 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. (4) Assignments. For all assignments above the full performance level, the higher-level duties must consist of significant scope, complexity (difficulty), and variety and be performed by the incumbent at least 25% of the time. Senior social workers are licensed or certified to independently practice social work at an advanced level. Senior social workers typically practice in a major program area such as but not limited to: Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center or Polytrauma Network Site; a Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Center, or a national VHA referral center, such as a national Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or a national Transplant Center, or other program areas of equivalent scope and complexity. The senior social worker may be assigned administrative responsibility for clinical program development and is accountable for clinical program effectiveness and modification of service patterns. Assignments include clinical settings where they have limited access to onsite supervision such as CBOCs or satellite outpatient clinics. The senior social worker collaborates with the other members of the treatment team in the provision of comprehensive health care services to Veterans, ensures equity of access, service, and benefits to this population, ensures the care provided is of the highest quality. The senior social worker provides leadership, direction, orientation, coaching, in-service training, staff development, and continuing education programs for assigned social work staff. They serve on committees, work groups, and task forces at the facility, VISN and national level, or in the community as deemed appropriate by the supervisor, Social Work Executive or Chief of Social Work Services. This assignment is to be relatively few in number based on the size of the facility/service and applying sound position management. This assignment must represent substantial additional responsibility over and above that required at the full performance grade level and cannot be used as the full performance level of this occupation. Reference: VA Regulations, specifically VA Handbook 5005, Part II, Appendix G-39 Social Worker Qualification Standard. This can be found in the local Human Resources Office. The full performance level of this vacancy is GS-12. Physical Requirements: The work is sometimes sedentary. Typically, the employee will sit to perform administrative work. However, other position duties include physical requirements which include but not limited to, long periods of walking; standing; bending; crouching, reaching and lifting of a variety of moderately heavy items, carrying of light items such as papers, books, small parts; or driving an automobile, etc. No special physical demands are required to perform the work. ["RECRUITMENT INCENTIVES MAY BE AUTHORIZED FOR HIGHLY QUALIFIED CANDIDATES. VA Careers - Social Work: https://youtube.com/embed/enRhz_ua_UU Duties include but are not limited to: Full range of psychodiagnostics services including psychosocial assessment, and using the most appropriate evidence-based psychotherapeutic techniques in providing quality care in the delivery of a full range of psychosocial and multidisciplinary services in the outpatient programs. May participate in Tele-mental-health or similar activities in order to provide service for Veterans who are located a prohibitive distance from VA facilities. For all clinical duties, the incumbent works in the Outpatient Division of the Mental Health Careline (MHCL). They participate in interdisciplinary team meetings for Veterans enrolled in Outpatient Mental Health Services. They interface with other departments and provide consultation services to medical center and CBOC staff on a wide variety of patient care issues, particularly related to identifying mental health concerns and social determinant needs of Veterans from all eras of service. The incumbent conducts evidence-based diagnostic assessment, and/or provides one or more evidence-based therapies, including but not limited to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression (CBT-D); Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Depression (ACT); Interpersonal Therapy for Depression (IPT); Behavioral Therapy/Behavioral Activation (BT-BA); Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT); Prolonged Exposure (PE); Brief PE; Cognitive Behavioral Conjoint Therapy for PTSD (CBCT-PTSD); Concurrent Treatment of PTSD/SUD using PE (COPE); Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR); Written Exposure Therapy (WET); Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET); Strength at Home (SAH - IPV); Social Skills Training (SST); Problem-Solving Training (PST); Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I); Brief CBT-I; Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Substance Used Disorders (CBT-SUD); Motivational Interviewing (MI); Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET); Cognitive BehavioralTherapy for Chronic Pain (CBT-CP); Brief CBT-CP; Integrative Behavioral Couples Therapy (IBCT); Behavioral Couples Therapy for SUD (BCT-SUD); Behavioral Family Therapy (BFT); Gottman Method Couples Therapy (GOTT); Parenting STAIR (PSTAIR); Exposure with Response Prevention for OCD (ERP); Mastery of Anxiety and Panic (MAP3); Unified Protocol (UP); Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Suicide Prevention (CBT-SP); Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS); Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Eating Disorders (CBT-ED); Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT); Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO-DBT); and Skills Training in Affective and Interpersonal Regulation (STAIR); or Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR). Work Schedule: Monday- Friday 8am-4:30pm Telework: Available Virtual: This is not a virtual position. Functional Statement #: 91441-0 Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Authorized Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not Authorized Financial Disclosure Report: Not required"]
The Veterans Health Administration is America’s largest integrated health care system, providing care at 1,298 health care facilities, including 171 medical centers and 1,113 outpatient sites of care of varying complexity (VHA outpatient clinics), serving 9 million enrolled Veterans each year.
