Peer Specialist

Make a bigger difference

At The Jewish Board, we don’t just make a difference – we make a bigger difference as we serve 45,000 New Yorkers every year. Join our dedicated team that’s been helping communities across New York City for almost 150 years and see just how big of a difference you can make.

Reasons you’ll love working with us:

• If you have a particular age range or population you’re interested in working with, you can find your niche here.  Our clients and staff are as diverse as the city we work in, and include people of all cultures, religions, races, gender expressions, and sexual orientations.

• We’re committed to supporting your career development by encouraging mobility and advancement across different program types and jobs. 

• With 70 locations throughout the five boroughs, you can work close to where you live. 

• Generous vacation time and 15 paid holidays will help you achieve a healthy work/life balance. 

• We offer an excellent benefits package with affordable, high-quality health and dental insurance with low co-pays. 

• You’ll receive ongoing support through high-quality supervision, specialized trainings from our Continuing Education team, and an education benefit. 

How you can make a bigger difference: 

The Jewish Board’s Community Behavioral Health treatment programs provide compassionate, high quality, evidence-based services to individuals and families in the communities we serve.  Our staff uses a culturally competent, person centered approach to help individuals and their families develop skills and resources to improve overall functioning, to instill hope, and to strengthen resiliency.  Our programs work closely with community partners to address health disparities in our neighborhoods while also celebrating the strengths and resilience of our communities.

POSITION OVERVIEW:

The Peer Specialist engages participants in peer-based services to identify and overcome barriers to engagement in treatment and community integration and utilizes a peer relationship to foster connection, trust, understanding and validation.

KEY ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

• Individual meetings with participants to help them address issues associated with substance use, mental health symptoms/symptom management and/or medication management; (re)engage with treatment providers, family and social relationships; assist in engaging in activities of daily living, independent living or supported housing
• Provide emotional and practical support to participants as they engage in behavioral health treatment
• Foster and maintain cooperative and collaborative relationships with community providers and network members
• Establish collaborative working relationships with referring treatment teams and other partners and assist participants with moving through systems of care
• Advocate with/for program participants to achieve personal goals and address barriers such as fear, stigma and communication disparities with community providers and supports
• Provide on-call after hour crisis intervention services when needed to participants and their support network
• Attend and participate in team meetings and supervisory sessions
• Develop short-term person-centered treatment plans to assist participants with achieving treatment goals
• Monitor and record participant’s progress and modify plan according to needs and preference
• Timely and accurate documentation of participant information within electronic health record
• Attend all required in-service training and staff development activities
• Perform other related duties as assigned

CORE COMPETENCIES for the position include:

• Reliability and discretion
• Adaptability
• Communication, negotiation and relationship-building skills.
• Organizational skills.
• Time Management
• Problem solving skills
• Initiative

• Speak and write English proficiently

EDUCATIONAL/TRAINING REQUIRED:

• NYS certification as a Peer Specialist 

EXPERIENCE REQUIRED/LANGUAGE PREFERENCE:

• Demonstrated ability to effectively use one’s personal story and role model recovery in a way that promotes personal growth and empowerment

• Knowledge of behavioral health systems and behavioral health regulations
• Ability to manage multiple projects and ask for help when needed
• Ability to participate on a team to accomplish tasks
• Ability to work with participants/family and treatment providers in a respectful and culturally affirming manner
• Knowledge of treatment, rehabilitation, and community support programs as they relate to participants/ families
• This position requires travel throughout New York City; ability to independently use public transportation

COMPUTER SKILLS REQUIRED:

• Prior experience with electronic health records and Microsoft Office a plus

VISUAL AND MANUAL DEXIERITY:

• The candidate should be able to read paper and electronic documents and perform significant data entry into various computer programs.
• Travel independently using public transportation.
• Able to input data into the Electronic Health Record.
• Limited applications of manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination.

WORK ENVIRONMENT/PHYSICAL EFFORT

• Noise level is consistent with levels usually present in an office, education, rehabilitation or health

      related environment when in office.

• Hazards present are consistent with those common to an office, education, rehabilitation or health

       related environment when in office.

• To perform the essential functions of this job the candidate must be able to travel within New York

      City carrying equipment such as a notebook, forms, laptop, mobile hotspot and cell phone 

       weighing up to approximately 10 pounds. 

• To perform the essential functions of this job, the candidate is routinely required to sit (60% of the

       time) and stand (20% of the time), and travel to and from appointments using public and private

       transportation options (20% of the time). 

•  Risks/hazards associated with the position are those which may be encountered traveling around

       New York City. 

If you join us, you’ll have these great benefits:
 

• Generous paid time off in addition to agency holidays and 15 sick days
• Affordable and high-quality medical/dental/vision plans 
• Tuition assistance and educational loan forgiveness
• Free continuing education opportunities 
• 403(b) retirement benefits and a pension
• Flexible spending accounts for health and transportation 
• 24/7 Accessible Employee Assistance Program  
• Life and disability insurance 
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion working groups that are available for you to join, including Confronting Structural Racism (COR), Coalition Against Anti-Semitism (CAAS), and the LGBTQ Steering Committee

Who we are:

The Jewish Board delivers innovative, high-quality, and compassionate mental health and social services to over 45,000 New Yorkers each year. We are unique in serving everyone from infants and their families to children, teens, and adults. We are proud to employ and serve people of all religions, races, cultural backgrounds, gender expressions, and sexual orientations. We are committed to building diverse, equitable, and inclusive teams to help support our mission, and we strongly encourage candidates from historically marginalized backgrounds to apply to work with us.

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