Addictions Counselor

[$2,500 sign-on bonus]

General Summary:

With general oversight, and under supervision when licensed at the ADT or CSC-AD level, provides education and counseling on chemical dependency, co-occurring disorders, and relapse prevention to patients.  Responsible for matching individuals with clinically indicated treatment deemed appropriate at the time of the initial assessment and ongoing assessments thereafter. Collaborates regarding treatment with community psychiatrist, therapist, or other health care providers to provide a holistic treatment approach.

Principal Responsibilities and Duties:

1. Customer Relations: Actively seeks to provide high quality services that meet the needs of patients, families, referral sources and third-party payers.
2. Case Management, Triage and Referral:

• Work requires full-time counselor, managing a caseload of 15 IOP patients, with 9 hours of group per week, 2 individual sessions and a treatment plan update per month and up to 25 OP patients with 2 hours of group per week, 1 individual session per month and a treatment plan renewal every 90 days. Counselor completes SMART admission assessment; intervention services and post discharge follow up for patients seeking treatment in our program. Ensures that information, assessment and referral needs are met prior to termination of patient contact and participates in weekly supervision and weekly staff meetings.
• Establishes and maintains regular contact with referring groups, individuals, MCVET and other agencies both internal and external to the program.
• Makes clinical referral and provides triage to appropriate program resources.

      3. Provision of Clinical Care:

• Participates in treatment planning with other members of the treatment team.
• Facilitates daily education, anger, stress management, negative emotion, relapse prevention, spirituality and daily inventory groups, completes group and individual progress note on patients and manages their case file.
• Serves as primary therapist for patients and provides case management services from the time of admission through transfer/discharge.

      4. Documentation/Reporting

• Completes written documentation of initial patient assessment, ongoing treatment and progress through discharge in compliance with BSAS, ADAA, CARF, ASAM, and the program standards.  Reports pertinent patient observations to program coordinator/treatment team.
• Collects referral data for quality assurance, program development, referral relations and health care utilization research.

     5. Participation in Improving Program Effectiveness and Efficiency: Participates in the evaluation of program effectiveness and efficiency and works to ensure continuous improvements in the quality of service.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities Required:

1. Work requires knowledge of community resources, orientation to chemically dependent/dual diagnosis patients, planning and organizational skills sufficient to resolve placement and liaison concerns - normally acquired through six months of work-related experience.
2. Certified under Health Occupation Article, Annotated Code of Maryland to provide substance abuse treatment in the state of Maryland. Accepted certifications: Alcohol & Drug Trainee, CSC-AD, CAC-AD.
3. Must possess interpersonal skills sufficient to communicate effectively when providing therapy and instruction and serve in liaison role with patients, families, staff and a wide variety of professionals while performing case management and triage functions (51 - 80% of work time).
4. Must have the ability to document services in a timely manner with clinical skill and appropriateness.
5. Must possess analytical skills sufficient to counsel and assist patients in resolving problems and perform intake assessments.
6. Work requires the ability to concentrate and pay close attention to detail when conducting assessment and therapy sessions, performing case management and triage, making treatment recommendations and providing crisis intervention services.
7. Work requires standing and walking between group rooms and office location. (for approximately 10% of work time)

Benefits:

At Sheppard Pratt, you will work alongside a multi-disciplined team led by a bold vision to change lives. We offer:

• A commitment to professional development, including a comprehensive tuition reimbursement program to support ongoing education and licensure and/or certification preparation
• Comprehensive medical, dental and vision benefits for benefit eligible positions
• 403b retirement match
• Generous paid-time-off for benefit eligible positions
• Complimentary Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Generous mileage reimbursement program

Pay for this position is determined on a number of factors, including but not limited to, years and level of related experience.

Working Conditions: Note: Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable a qualified individual with a disability(s) to perform the essential functions of this position.

1. Normal office/group meeting room environment where there is no physical discomfort due to temperature, dust, noise or smoke.
2. Occasional, but infrequent, physical stress or risk may be presented through contact with aggressive or disturbed patients (less than 6% of work time).