*Housing Stipend Available!* MAT Legal Assistant 2

Position Status

Full

Site

Philadelphia

NHC Position Type

Care Coordinator

Position Summary

The goal of the Medicine Assisted Treatment Medical Legal Community Partnership (MAT-MLCP) is to provide integrated legal care within MAT programs and thus improve the rate of recovery from substance use disorder (SUD), make healthcare teams more effective and efficient, improve the well-being of the community, and decrease the costs of healthcare. To increase our overall impact on the MAT population and wider Philadelphia community, the MLCP seeks to incorporate two NHC members into its unique legal care team.

To support the MAT-MLCP, the NHC members will engage in direct casework to serve the needs of the MAT patient populations at Esperanza Health Center. Supported by full-time staff attorneys, the NHC member will have activities including: interviewing and advising patients who become clients via referrals from health care staff; collaborating with healthcare providers to understand the relationship between clients’ legal, medical, and social circumstances; evaluating a client’s legal needs; providing assistance to address their legal needs and/or making the appropriate referrals; negotiating with administrative bodies to help clients access critical benefits including Medicaid, SNAP and SS; coordinating and managing case referrals; and community outreach and education on legal rights and resources

MLCP NHC positions meet critical needs that combine elements of all current staff positions, but are ultimately unique in their function. The NHC members assess patients’ legal needs, provide legal advice, and collaborate with providers and other health center staff to help patients access benefits or other social services. However, the NHC members are limited to working with MAT patients (rather than with a general population) and will therefore encounter a wholly different set of client issues; while our legal advocates who serve the general-population primarily deal with public benefits and utilities, the work of our advocates in MAT programs centers on helping clients secure safe housing and maintain safe family lives. Additionally, our general-population legal advocates offer preventative legal care while our SUD/MAT advocates serve clients whose legal needs are critical or that have caused them to be in crisis.

Major Duties and Responsibilities

  • Conducting prescreens and intakes with new patients during their first Medication-Assisted Treatment visit 
  • Completing Social Determinants of Health and Legal Needs screenings 
  • Identifying patients who are at-risk of losing health sustaining resources and creating a plan of action in collaboration with the MAT medical team and patient 
  • Reviewing referrals sent to NHC member via the electronic health record and navigating patients towards the correct resource 
  • Tracking patient progress in obtaining benefits with patient and the organization that awards said benefits 
  • Collaborate with healthcare providers  to understand the relationship between clients' legal, medical, and  social circumstances 
  • Provide information and/or assistance  to address legal needs such as public  benefits (Medicaid, SNAP, etc), utilities  (maintaining utilities in the case of shut offs), family law (custody, protections from abuse), and housing  (landlord/tenant, habitability)  
  • Review changes and developments in city policy regarding public benefits, utilities, family law and housing 
  • Maintaining professional boundaries and respecting medical and legal patient confidentiality 
  • Educating patients on medical interventions and prevention through one-on-one interactions 
  • Documenting interactions with patients in both an electronic health record and a legal systems database 
  • Collaborating with supervisors and other leadership 
  • Providing social service navigation 
  • Participating in meetings and conferences 

Characteristics of an Ideal Candidate

  • Organized; sound organizational skills
  • Multi-tasker; ability to balance
  • Detail-oriented
  • Comfortable speaking with patient populations, individually or in groups
  • Interested in health and wellness promotion
  • Experience interacting with patient populations
  • Education in Social Work, Public health, and/or Psychology
  • Team-oriented
  • Customer-oriented
  • Positive attitude
  • Patient and calm
  • Good verbal and written communication skills
  • Proficient computer and data entry skills (e.g., Microsoft suite)
  • Experience working with patient populations
  • Speaks language(s) spoken by patient populations
  • Instills trust easily
  • Creative problem solving
  • Persistence
  • Resilience
  • Tenacity
  • Open-minded
  • Non-judgmental
  • Kind and friendly

Knowledge Required for the Position

  • 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

Supervision

  • 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.

Review

  • The Member independently plans and carries out the projects and selects the approaches and methods to be used in solving problems.

Guidelines

  • Detailed guidelines exist, including regulations and directives, handbooks, precedents, industry standards and files of previous projects.
  • 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.

Complexity

  • Member has to develop, analyze, or evaluate information before the service position can progress.
  • In making decisions, the Member is often required to depart from past approaches and to extend traditional techniques.
  • The Member must develop new techniques, methods, or approaches to complete service position assignments.

Special Considerations

  • Language proficiency
  • Proof of COVID-19 Vaccination must be produced upon hire.
  • Host site may provide housing stipend, if needed.

Language Proficiency Requirements

  • Spanish, Minimum professional proficiency