Supportive Housing CHW

New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC) is community-driven, trauma-informed and equity-focused non-profit that provides a wide range of services, including: real estate development, housing counseling, small business assistance, corridor cleaning, workforce development, nutrition education, and community health resources to residents and businesses across the Kensington, Port Richmond, and Fishtown neighborhoods of Philadelphia.

NKCDC's NHC Supportive Housing CHW position will work with NKCDC’s Resident Support Services Program, to grow and prepare the program to better serve individuals and families who are current tenants and future tenants in NKCDC’s affordable housing buildings. The CHW will be working with tenants who fit within Special Needs Populations, including persons with mental and physical disabilities, those who have previously experienced homelessness and housing insecurity, youth aging out of foster care, persons who were formerly incarcerated, and senior citizens. This role will include identifying structural oppression, while researching common pathways into homelessness and pathways to exit homelessness in Philadelphia and informing NKCDC as an organization how to best support this population towards housing security.

The Supportive Housing CHW will serve 35hr/week at NKCDC and must complete 1700 hours of service within the 46-week service term

Assessing Needs:

• Utilizing Social Drivers of Health and Mental Health Screeners to assess needs and resources.

Capacity Building:

• Developing new programs or services to address community needs
• Modifying organizational systems/practices to improve service efficiency and/or effectiveness
• Building relationships with community partners
• Conducting research, mapping community assets, or reviewing data to strengthen the ability to meet community needs
• Developing and/or providing staff education or training

Health Education:

• Engaging in outreach and promoting health education topics and healthcare services
• Recruiting participants
• Creating healthcare and wellness educational materials
• Facilitating and conducting healthcare and wellness trainings and classes
• Planning and preparing classes

- Self-Starter

- Able to build strong relationships

- Comfort speaking with others, individually or in groups

- Community engagement/outreach skills

- Compassionate

- Be able to engage with people from various backgrounds: various socio-economic and educational levels.

- Be able to engage and speak with individuals comfortably and effectively convey messages.

- They will need to take initiative and help co-create. A person who has an entrepreneurial spirit will be successful.

- Be able to engage with complexities of a community and understand nuance thinking.

- Possess community engagement and outreach skillsets.

- The individual must be organized and detailed oriented. 

- Knowledge of AmeriCorps/Health Corps Member requirements

- Skill with Microsoft Office or other software for a variety of data processing operations involving a range of problem solving, record keeping, correspondence, and service tracking options.

- Willingness and eagerness to acclimate to NKCDC and its surroundings, and become aware of the personnel and policy manual

• Member uses initiative in carrying out recurring assignments following set procedures, independently
• The supervisor assigns service activities, advises on changes in procedures, and is available for assistance when required
• The supervisor assigns service activities in terms of project objectives and basic priorities and is available for consultation in resolving controversial issues.

- The service activities are reviewed for accuracy through spot checks, through complaints from customers, and through observation of the member at service.

- The member independently plans and carries out the projects and selects the approaches and methods to be used in solving problems

- Completed projects are reviewed very generally to determine that objectives have been met and are in compliance with policies and regulations.

- Written and oral guides provide specific instructions for doing service

- Most instructions are easily memorized and require little interpretation

- Guidelines are generally applicable, but the member independently makes adaptations in dealing with problems and unusual situations

- Member must use considerable judgment in adapting current or developing new guidance

- Member has to develop, analyze, or evaluate information before the service position can progress

- The service position assignments vary significantly or often involve unusual circumstances and incomplete or conflicting data

-The member must develop new techniques, methods, or approaches to complete service position assignments

Some evening hours may be required on occasion for resident community building events and tenant workforce development program class hours. Comp time is available, so if for example the SH CHW is asked to work 4 hours into the evening, they may elect to arrive to work that day 4 hours later in the morning or take 4 hours off another day within that pay period, with supervisors' permission.
The Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, where the large majority of this position's work is located, is suffering from decades of disinvestment and structural oppression, resulting in a concentration of homelessness, opioid epidemic, open air drug markets, quality of life issues, crime, and violent crime.

Applicants should be made aware that their work will be in Kensington and that comes with challenges that need to be navigated.

• Unusual service hours, involving evenings, weekends, or long shifts
• Unsafe or hazardous surroundings or working conditions
• Language proficiency (complete the following question if language proficiency is required)

Spanish (preferred)

Speaking Proficiency

Minimum Professional Proficiency: Able to speak the language with sufficient structural accuracy and vocabulary to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversations on practical, social, and professional topics.

Reading Proficiency

Limited Working Proficiency: Able to read simple prose, in a form equivalent to typescript or printing, on subjects within a familiar context.