
Website State Of Texas Jobs
Job Description:
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) is responsible for protecting the unprotected — children, elderly, and people with disabilities — from abuse, neglect, and exploitation. DFPS accomplishes this responsibility by employing over 12,000 workers who live up to the agency’s Mission, Vision, & Values in service to the 27 million citizens of Texas.
Job Responsibilities:
- Searching for potential kinship providers throughout the case. Completing home studies of a child’s family members or family friends (kinship providers) who might care for the child.
- Meets with the parents to assess risk and safety issues, identify behavior changes necessary to achieve child safety, referring parents to appropriate services to address the identified needs to move towards positive permanency. Discusses with parents their progress towards making changes to behaviors that pose dangers to their child(ren).
- Meets with children, parents, family friends, or foster homes in public as well as in their own homes.
- Collaborates with a Placement Team, including Kinship staff, for placements, as needed.
- Works with the department’s attorney to prepare for contested-court hearings and trials.
- Receives cases from investigators after children are removed from their homes, placed in CPS conservatorship, and placed in care outside their homes.
- Determines each child’s needs and ensuring that appropriate referrals for testing, evaluations, records, or further assessments are made.
- Ensures all services are focused on achieving positive permanency.
- Attends and participates in court hearings about the child and family. This includes contacting the parties in the case before hearings, preparing court reports, and testifying in court on the child’s needs, the family’s progress, and the department’s efforts to achieve permanency for the child.
- Keeps the child’s, parents, caregivers, court-appointed attorney and guardian ad litem(s) informed about the child’s circumstances and significant events.
- Working with children, families, and communities to plan for a child’s permanency.
- Identifying potential permanency resources for the child through ongoing contact with parents, family members, and other individuals the child and family identify as important to them.
- Participates in meetings and conferences at times and places convenient for the family members as well as everyone involved in the case.
- Visits children monthly to assess the child’s feeling of safety in their current home, to plan for permanency, and to discuss their needs, wishes, and progress while in care
Job Requirements:
- Knowledge of child development
- Knowledge of family dynamics
- Skill in effective verbal and written communication.
- Skill in establishing and maintaining effective working relationships.
- Skill in problem solving techniques
- Ability to operate a personal computer.
- Ability to travel and attend child and family visits as well as other work related appointments and meetings after 5pm.
- Ability to be on call on a rotating basis and work irregular hours.
- Ability to work in an emotion-filled environment and which may require conducting home visits in isolated or high crime areas and may involve exposure to substandard and unsanitary living conditions.
Job Details:
Company: State Of Texas Jobs
Vacancy Type: Full Time
Job Location: Tyler, TX, US
Application Deadline: N/A
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