VP, Programs (Behavioral Health)

Since 1972, Covenant House has served and advocated for youth and young families experiencing homelessness, human trafficking, and exploitation.

Our overarching goal is to end homelessness among youth and young families by helping them achieve housing stability, heal from trauma, tap into their innate resilience, and hone their interests and skills to forge new pathways to independence.

This work is carried out across Covenant House sites in 34 cities in the US, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras.

About the Role

As the Vice President, Program (Behavioral Health), your work will directly support our mission to end youth homelessness by ensuring we offer a full range of evidence-based and informed interventions to support young people with behavioral health challenges. You will lead the strategic development, implementation, and oversight of behavioral health programs and services for young people across the Covenant House federation, working to expand access to behavioral health services and supports for youth, enhance quality of care, improve outcomes, and disrupt the trajectory from youth homelessness to chronic adult homelessness.

This is a newly created role that will report to the Senior Vice President, Program. The Vice President, Program (Behavioral Health) will ensure their work aligns with Covenant House’s Journey Home roadmap as well as our organizational values of inclusivity, joy, courage, accountability and ambition.

You will collaborate closely with Covenant House site leaders and behavioral health teams and develop partnerships to expand access to behavioral health services for youth, reduce barriers to care, and enhance opportunities for support and healing for youth.

You will also develop and support sites in the implementation of systems to identify youth with behavioral health challenges early in their stay at CH and offer a wide range of clinical interventions and linkages to community providers to support their ongoing symptom management and treatment.

All work will be undertaken with a spirit of collaboration and commitment to partnership with Covenant House site leaders and designed from a strengths-based, culturally sensitive, trauma-informed lens that prioritizes youth voice and choice.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Behavioral Health Service Access

• Support sites that don’t currently offer on-site behavioral health services to add this service offering either through a staff role or community partnerships
• Support the expansion of psychiatry and substance use counseling services across the federation to ensure
• Explore development of partnerships with online therapy providers, community-based providers, and providers that specialize in specific sub-populations of youth CH serves

Program/Service Development and Technical Support

• Take on leadership role for CHI’s Youth Support and Response Plan project and support sites to implement the risk assessment and safety planning protocol and related resources developed for this project
• Identify and support sites to implement evidence-based group treatment curricula
• Develop and launch a pilot to train CH site clinicians in brief solution focused therapy modalities

Develop resources and best practice guidance to educate and support staff in their care provision to specific sub-populations of youth

Identify validated behavioral health screening tools to integrate into our intake and risk assessment protocols

• Develop and lead a learning community comprised of behavioral health leads from across the CH federation
• Engage CH youth to get their input on the BH programs, services and supports available at CH and how they can better meet their needs
• Training
• Train sites on how to use CHI’s risk assessment and safety planning protocol and related resources
• Train sites in the use of screening protocols for mental health, depression, suicide risk, and substance use
• Develop training for front line staff on supporting youth with common behavioral health challenges
• Become a certified trainer in Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) and manage the federation YMHFA program
• Fundraising
• Collaborate on the development of grant proposals and reports related to behavioral health
• Manage deliverables for behavioral health grants
• Participate in CHI fundraising events

Additional Responsibilities

Collaborate on building out a standardized data collection and outcome measurement plan for behavioral health services across the CH federation

Support the development of data reports on behavioral health services as required for grant deliverables and to support site quality improvement efforts

Meet with site behavioral health leads quarterly to share their behavioral health outcome data, lift up best practices and shared learning, and identify opportunities for improvement

• Other duties as assigned by the Chief Program Officer or SVP, Program
• Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
• Expertise in the areas of trauma and brief solution focused therapies
• Expertise in supporting LGBGTQ+ youth, preferably in the youth homeless services sector
• The entrepreneurial spirit, adaptability and flexibility needed to succeed in a new role and area of work for CHI
• Collaborative leader with a customer service orientation
• Exceptional project management, organizational and interpersonal skills
• Highly developed communication skills, both verbal and written; ability to interact with a diverse range of people
• Strong technical skills; experience with MS365 and SharePoint
• Ability to work both independently and collaboratively, with a curious and collaborative mindset
• Experience working in a multi-cultural environment and working with people from a variety of backgrounds
• Demonstrated dedication to continuous learning and growth

Required Qualifications

• A minimum of a master’s degree in a clinical field is required
• 10-15 years of program leadership experience in behavioral health, preferably in youth homeless services

Experience providing technical assistance and system-level leadership to affiliated or external behavioral health programs and providers, with demonstrated ability to support program development, adoption, and implementation across sites or partners rather than solely providing and/or managing direct clinical services

• Experience developing and managing system-level partnerships
• Preferred Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Qualifications
• Experience in the homeless services sector, non-profit, and/or social services
• Spanish fluency (written and oral)
• Familiarity with Smartsheet

Travel Requirements

• Potential for up to 20% travel as needed within the U.S., Canada, and Latin America
• Ability to travel once per year to New York City in early October for our annual in-person traditions
• Outside of this business travel, this position is fully remote

Our Community

Our critical mission demands that we have all voices at the table. A team of diverse people, perspectives, and experiences is smarter, stronger, and more effective for our young people. At Covenant House, every team member is valued, respected, heard, and supported, and we welcome honest and courageous self-reflection on any aspects of our work that are based on biased or outdated viewpoints. We deliberately create opportunities for our staff to grow and thrive.

Covenant House International is an Equal Opportunity Employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind: CHI is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment.

All employment decisions at CHI are based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, family or parental status, disability status, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate.

CHI will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics and encourages all qualified applicants to apply.

If you have a disability or medical condition and need a reasonable accommodation, such as an ASL interpreter or a different interview format, or if you have physical accessibility needs, let us know. Contact us at 1-929-502-2521, Monday through Friday, 9 a. m. to 5 p. m., Eastern Time or email us at chipeopleandculture@covenanthouse.org.