Job Description

SCO Family of Services, the largest nonprofit Voluntary Foster Care Agency in NYS, has an opening in three weeks for a board certified or board eligible Psychiatrist to work in our Jamaica, Queens and our Flatbush, Brooklyn locations. SCO provides services for approximately 60,000 individuals in family foster care, preventive centers, early childhood settings, residential treatment facilities, shelters, boarding homes, and transfer high schools.

Our Family Foster Care outpatient division works with some 900 children ages 1-20 who have been removed from their homes by the Administration for Children’s Services due to neglect or maltreatment. Our Mental Health and Medical Services staff screen children upon admission, and those showing significant mental health problems are referred within our department for psychotherapeutic treatment by a clinician from psychology, social work, and mental health counselor training backgrounds. Youth showing more severe psychopathology are placed in Therapeutic Family Foster Care, necessitating initial and yearly Psychiatric evaluations as well as ongoing therapy. Regular Family Foster Care youth may show a range of problems ranging from Adjustment Disorders, through a frequent category of disruptive behavior disorders, including ADHD, through emergent psychotic-spectrum presentations. Children who might benefit from augmentative pharmacotherapy are referred for evaluation to our psychiatrists, and if medication is implemented, youth are met with monthly for Medication Reviews. Psychiatrists may work with biological and foster parents in history gathering, determinations of suitability for return of children to home or psychoeducation with parenting figures. Psychiatrists also participate in treatment team conferences and in advising caseworkers regarding the indications and expected effects of psychotropic regimens.

Responsibilities:

• Conduct Psychiatric Evaluations relating to the mental status and reality testing of children and adolescents suspected of having a thought disorder, major affective disorder and/or risk of suicide.
• Evaluations are scheduled on a referral basis and on a yearly basis for special rate children, conducted at our Jamaica, Queens location.
• Provide pharmacotherapy and monthly Medication Reviews as indicated.
• Participate in treatment team case reviews.

Qualifications

• M.D. from an accredited medical school, board certified or board eligible, preferably with specialization in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
• At least two years’ clinical experience with children, preferably with a foster care population.

Interested candidates may apply via SCO’s website Taleo algorithm, or on Indeed, or initiate first contact through sending an email to Mental Health Director Jeffrey Atlas, Ph.D., jatlas@sco.org.