Director of Forensic Systems Solutions

Position Summary:

With a focus on Philadelphia behavioral health consumers and their families, this position helps to plan, and develop solutions to address local and state-wide forensic and behavioral health challenges. This role is also active in providing education and training to professionals I within the behavioral health and the criminal justice system, as well as those creating policy legislation or within peer communities. This position requires an active collaborator to bring together those within the behavioral health and criminal justice system and other spaces in order to work collaboratively on projects that will improve outcomes for individuals within the system and their families.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Is the primary staff for and directs the meetings of the State-Wide Forensic Interagency Task Force (FITF) for its bi-monthly meetings. This includes securing presenters and confirming meeting space for these events.
• Promotes establishment or expansion of local educational training services and provides technical assistance to individuals and group conducting conferences, workshops, and training courses.
• Develops and maintains relationships with training personnel in the Philadelphia Prison System, Philadelphia Police, and Probation and Parole, Sheriff's Department, Crisis Related Services, and those same units in other counties where training is produced.
• Participates in statewide initiatives and become active in discussions that address advocacy efforts to improve access to behavioral health care to those who are justice involved.
• Provides consultation to the Philadelphia DBHIDS on forensic and related issues especially related to family/peer involvement.
• Is a member, and provides assistance to, Philadelphia initiatives such as the Forensic Task Force, Suicide Prevention Task Force, the Jail Suicide Committee, and others
• Provides consultation to county governments on establishment of CIT, Forensic Committees, and related issues.
• Develops and updates training curriculum for professionals in the behavioral health, criminal justice systems, criminogenics, the Sequential Intercept Model and family inclusion including content, research, presentation, and evaluation format.
• Consults with Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice Agencies on grant proposals related to Criminal Justice and Behavioral Health Initiatives.
• Oversees content creation and addresses inquiries from the Forensic Systems Solutions Website.
• Administrates and establishes CEU certification for programs, when applicable, including preparation of applications and meeting of qualification requirements.
• Develops and/or participates in train -the-trainer courses for training curriculum for professionals in the behavioral health and criminal justice system and other program areas, such as providers, family-to-systems, and families etc.
• Plans, develops and/or facilitates conferences and workshops when applicable for organizations' events such as the Annual Drexel Forensic Rights and Treatment Conference, GAINS Center, CASSP Institute, OMHSAS and local conferences.
• Conducts needs analysis with regular review of literature, journals, research, legal updates, reports of professions in the behavioral health and criminal justice systems including current issues, practice issues, system issues and serious brain disorders.
• Compiles data and analyzes past and current year training requirements to identify funding/grant opportunities in the education/training of behavioral health criminal justice professionals and prepares, drafts, reviews and/or amends grant proposals and reports to foundations.
• Consults and/or updates, as appropriate, advisory board members on current status of various statutes and acts.
• Develops and maintains a resource library of reports/statistics and Operations, Procedures and Forms manual.
• Works collaboratively with the other FTAC core programming
• Other duties as needed

Skills Required:

• Ability to read, analyze and interpret most complex documents, including legislation, statutes, and case law.
• Ability to articulately respond (written and oral) to sensitive inquiries and complaints.
• Ability to write speeches and articles using original or innovative techniques or style.
• Skilled at grant writing.
• Ability to make effective and persuasive speeches and presentations on controversial or complex topics top management, public groups and/or board of directors.
• Knowledge of OMHSAS - key players and their roles as it relates to grant/grant writing, training initiatives, etc.
• Knowledge base of behavioral health, treatment interventions, medication protocols, and other relevant elements.
• Knowledge base of drug and alcohol services and forensic system.
• Knowledge of various statutes and acts including the Mental Health Procedures Act, Juvenile Act, and Crimes Code and Department of Justice Statistics reports. Educates and promotes the establishment of local educational services by performing the following duties and responsibilities.
• Knowledge base of the criminal justice system and its' various components including police, corrections, probation and parole, juvenile justice, etc. and the intersection(s) with a variety of other systems and related state and local agencies.
• Ability to navigate the Microsoft Office Suite and create, maintain documents in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
• Ability to navigate and utilize on-line communication platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

Education and Experience:

• A minimum of a bachelors degree in criminal justice, social work, psychology or related field with a focus on criminal justice issues.
• Three year's experience working with the criminal justice system.
• Minimum of 1 - 2 years in an "advocacy" capacity - either volunteer or paid.
• Minimum of 1 - 3 years in training and educating criminal justice system professionals, including police and corrections, or related experience.
• Family member of a consumer actively or previously enrolled in behavioral health treatment services a plus.

Physical Demands:

E1 - Ability to sit and stand for long periods of time.

E2 - Ability to life up to 50 lbs. (training materials, audio/visual equipment).

E3 - Ability to travel independently by public transportation and/or personal vehicle.

E4 - Geographical knowledge of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth.

E5 - Specific vision abilities include close vision, distance vision, color vision and depth

perception.

Equal Opportunity Employment:

PMHCC is committed to equal opportunity. It is our policy to support equal employment for all employees and applicants without regard to race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientations, age, national origin, disability, behavioral health status, military status or any other characteristic protected by law.

Americans with Disabilities Act:

Employees as well as applicants who are currently or become disabled must be able to perform the functions of the job with either reasonable accommodation or unaided. PMHCC will examine reasonable accommodations on a case-by-case basis with accordance to the law.