El 1 Assistant Director

Salary Range: $118,220 - $129,820 + Attractive Superannuation

Open Arms - Veterans & Families Counselling (formerly VVCS) is Australia’s leading provider of high quality mental health assessment and clinical counselling services for Australian veterans and their families. Open Arms are focused on meeting client needs through a combination of proven clinical practices and new and emerging evidence-based approaches.

The Assistant Director - Clinical Operations, reports directly to the Director Client Assist Contact Centre and is responsible for overseeing and managing the provision of a health and allied health telephony based service that provides clinical intake, escalations services, brief telephone counselling interventions, risk identification and safety planning for veterans and their families who are seeking counselling support.

To achieve this, the Assistant Director - Clinical Operations provides ongoing consultation and advice to clinicians conducting initial assessments, and triage for clients entering the service. This role provides clinical oversight and operational coordination for the Client Assist Contact Centre, in line with the Open Arms’ clinical practice policies and procedures.

The Assistant Director - Clinical Operations role also includes contributing as part of a broader leadership team to the overseeing and coordination of clinicians within a call centre environment as well as being responsible for professional development activities for clinical staff, case consultations, coordinating resources, workforce planning, undertaking continuous improvement and monitoring quality assurance. Awareness of working within a rostered 24 hour telephony environment is an important component to the effectiveness of the role.

The Client Assist Contact Centre is open 365 days per year, 24 hours per day.

**Duties**
- Provide clinical oversight of initial assessment and triage for clients engaging with Open Arms. This includes the provision of ongoing consultation and advice to clinicians in the intake team. Clinical oversight is especially required in cases with complex needs or where risk is identified. This may require coordination and consultation with Open Arms regions, national office and referrers in relation to clinical assessment and client allocation as required.
- Monitor the delivery of clinical intake and counselling services across the team to ensure consistency, adherence to relevant clinical policy, and administrative procedures. A strong focus should be on maintaining and improving national consistency in clinical activities, including clinical record keeping, and assessment of clinical risk and clients’ needs.
- Manage the development and implementation of Open Arms Intake protocols, procedures and best practices for the provision of high quality, nationally consistent intake service provision. This should include clear triage guidelines and protocols for responding appropriately to identify clinical risk among clients. This will include participating in planning and evaluation activities in consultation with the Director, Client Assist Contact Centre.
- Assist in identifying training and development opportunities of clinical staff. Consider and coordinate professional development for the clinical team.
- Provide expert advice on policy, complex problem solving and issues management for internal and external stakeholders.
- Implement change and manage ambiguity in the workplace
- Availability to undertake shift work between the hours of 7AM - 7PM, Monday - Friday.

**Eligibility**
- Under section 22(8) of the Public Service Act 1999, employees must be Australian citizens to be employed in the Australian Public Service (APS).
- All applicants external to DVA offered employment will be required to successfully undergo a pre-engagement screening check, even if they have a security clearance. The screening check is conducted in accordance with the Australian Government Protective Security Policy Framework requirements.
- Currently hold or ability to obtain a Working with Vulnerable People registration **OR**:

- Currently hold or ability to obtain a Working with Children check.

**AND**
- Qualifications as an AHPRA registered Psychologist / Mental Health Occupational Therapist / Mental Health Registered Nurse with full AHPRA registration, **OR**:
**Notes**

Where a non-ongoing position is offered, the role will be filled for an initial specified term of up to 18 months.

A merit pool of suitable applicants may be created which may be used to fill future ongoing and non-ongoing vacancies should they become available over the next 18 months.

DVA is committed to improving the data skills and capability of our workforce to underpin our goal of becoming a leading data-driven organisation.