• 2 permanent part-time positions

About Us

The Shepherd Centre (TSC) is a highly regarded not-for-profit, providing specialised programs for children with hearing loss and their families. Our programs meet the needs of children of all ages; from our world-leading early intervention system for babies and toddlers, through to our mentoring program ‘Hear for You’ for school-aged children and teenagers. We have been enabling children with hearing loss to develop their listening and spoken language, literacy and social skills for over 50 years, ensuring they can go on to achieve their full potential in life. We currently support over 700 families all over Australia with telehealth for rural and regional areas and 7 in-person centres in NSW and ACT. Our global platform HearHub, supports health professionals working with children with hearing loss all over the world.

About the role

We are entering an exciting new chapter at TSC, as we grow and expand our services to even more children and families and we have a number of exciting projects happening right across the organisation.

We are seeking two highly motivated and experienced Child and Family Counsellors (CFCs) to work with our friendly and dynamic teams at Macquarie and Newtown, in Sydney. These are permanent part-time positions working between 22-28 hours, ideally spread over 3-4 days per week.

All Child & Family Counselling activities are focused around two core understandings. The team addresses these two areas with either in direct clinical service to families, or by providing consultation to other disciplines within the interdisciplinary team:

1. The value of strengthening TSC as a 'Family Centred Service', to acknowledge parents as the experts on their child, empower and engage them in collaborative 'partnerships', leading to better outcomes
2. The need to support the parent/child relationship. This relationship is the vehicle through which the team works with the family to build Listening and Spoken Language skills via our parental coaching model. Successful attachment & relationships are key in achieving optimal outcomes for each child and family.

The Child & Family Counsellor is responsible for promoting and facilitating close interdisciplinary teamwork with other team members including Listening and Spoken Language Therapists, Paediatric Audiologists, Clinical Administration and Research & Assessments Teams. They will develop key relationships with external agencies within the hearing, disability and Early Intervention sectors.

The focus of the Child and Family Counselling Service is to:

• Support families in the early stages of diagnosis of hearing loss and during their early intervention years
• Provide support and therapeutic interventions to families in a range of areas, including: individual/family counselling; group work; grief and loss counselling; supporting families in making decisions related to their child's hearing devices; enhancing family resilience and parent advocacy; preparation for school

Why join The Shepherd Centre?

At The Shepherd Centre, we are passionate about improving outcomes for the children accessing our programs. We support work-life balance and offer great employee benefits including:

• Competitive not-for-profit salary packaging (tax-free salary component)
• Six weeks annual leave (pro-rated for part-time)
• Flexible work hours with a genuine work-life balance
• Great professional development and training opportunities
• A supportive and collaborative working environment
• A family friendly and professional company culture

About you:

• Tertiary qualification in Social Work, Psychology or equivalent tertiary qualification
• Eligibility for registration with Australian Association of Social Workers or the Australian Psychological Society or equivalent professional organisation
• Minimum of two years' work experience in providing counselling and casework services to parents, children and families
• Knowledge of early childhood development, family mental health issues and child protection policy/practice
• Experience working in an Interdisciplinary team and well developed teamwork skills
• Demonstrated group work skills & experience in development, implementation and facilitation of groups
• Experience working with families both face-to-face and via online communication services (similar to skype)
• Working with Children Check (NSW) or willingness to obtain one
• NDIS Worker Check