The Dale House Project seeks an Independent Living Specialists II (Team Lead) to provide relational, life-on-life support in our residential community of older adolescents learning skills for independent living. The Dale House is a Christ-centered community of and for broken people doing life together.
The Dale House Project is a community for at-risk youth. Youth participate in our programming to prepare for independents as adults. Our community strives to be a safe and supportive environment where they can build skills, find sources of support, and discover a place where they belong. Youth often come from the foster care/child welfare system, the juvenile justice system, or having experienced homelessness. All of the youth have experience with trauma, abuse, and neglect.
As an independent living specialist, you lead a team providing therapeutic services to support young people’s skills, habits, and support network to live independently as adults.
Requirements
What You’ll be Doing:
You lead a team of people who are in an intentional community of caring, mutual support, and Christian ministry. The team you lead is the “backbone” of our youth programs. You are part of an intentional Christian community, where some staff live on the block alongside fellow staff. Not all of our staff live together - but we still value community and the importance of building relationships with each other. This position serves youth in Supportive Employment and or Supportive Housing services. (Specialization in Housing or Employment may result in a dedicated position).
You are responsible for making sure your team accomplishes the goals set out during your work session. That includes providing therapeutic services for youth, assigning and delegating tasks for the team to accomplish, and maintaining a supportive, therapeutic environment for youth to build life skills. Sometimes that means you engage in conflict with residents directly. You might help youth negotiate peer conflicts, suggesting ways to de-escalate youth when they have a hard time processing their emotions. You will probably be cussed out, lied to, and mistreated by youth at one point or another - These are the kinds of survival techniques youth have learned to protect themselves in their upbringing. You’ll be asked to help youth go through the process of repairing / reconciling relationships, asking for forgiveness, and experiencing grace. A lot of youth have a tendency to quit on relationships when things get hard. At the Dale House, we show youth that conflict done well actually strengthens relationships - and you’ll play a wide variety of roles to make that possible.
Many youth feel like the world is a scary place. We seek to provide experiences and memories for youth to get a different glimpse of the world and their possibilities in it. We provide new experiences (we describe ourselves as a “ministry of firsts”, because we provide first times for so many things). We go on trips with youth to show them new ways of having “good, clean fun.” We seek to show youth a greater window of possibilities for life, community, and their future. Some of those experiences include our annual trip to California, a week at summer camp, rafting trips, our version of Prom (called “winter banquet”) and more.
The ideal candidate will possess certain essential traits for success in this role:
Compensation:
This is a full-time position. Salary: $42,000, with a full benefit package. Dale House covers the cost for health coverage (monthly premiums) at no expense to you. Other benefits come from Young Life, including: dental, vision, basic life insurance, and a match on 401(k) contributions up to 4%.
How to apply:**Please submit your resume and cover letter as PDF attachments to Dana Scarbrough at dana@dalehouse.org. For the email subject heading line type: Independent Living Specialist II, Your First Name, Your Last Name.