Child Development Specialist

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The University of Miami/UHealth Department of Pediatrics has an exciting opportunity for a full time Child Development Specialist to work in Miami, FL.

The Child Development Specialist works with children, their parents, and educators in assessing a child's development needs, deficiencies, and goals. Moreover, this position offers parents and caretakers advice on how to best overcome the challenges presented by developmental issues.

Core responsibilities

• Provides evaluations, reports, goals, direct therapy, and consultation services.
• Implements services and activities for children with a variety of developmental and diagnostic indicators.
• Delivers consultation services to parents, caregivers, teachers, and community specialists and professionals regarding client progress and recommendations.
• Assists children with physical, social, and behavioral needs.
• Maintains effective communications with parents.
• Preserves confidentiality while communicating with parents and other departments about individual children and family needs and progress.
• Ensures all licensing regulations are complied with at all times.
• Inputs patient data into appropriate computer systems in a timely manner.
• Adheres to University and unit-level policies and procedures and safeguards University assets.

Department Specific Functions

• Participates as a team member in the evaluation and ongoing assessment of children's developmental functioning using formal and informal testing measures and tools to examine the cognitive, gross/fine motor development, language, social-emotional, and self-help skills of infants and toddlers at risk for or presenting with developmental delays. Assessment focuses on use of standardized psychological measures of development.
• Provides services in natural environment, i.e. in the home and community, to play a pivotal role in providing and/or coordinating early intervention services to the family within the community. Provides direct instruction to families and other caregivers on strategies to meet identified individualized needs and outcomes as written on the IFSP.
• Works in a leadership role to assess, plan, provide, coordinate, and evaluate early intervention services and strategies in a natural environment using a consultative approach.
• Interprets developmental/medical assessment and evaluation results for families as part of a team. Interpret results of assessments under the supervision of a Ph.D. Psychologist.
• Develops an individualized plan of care including natural environments based on child and family assessments and the Individualized Family Support Plan (IFSP) as part of a team. Implement individualized developmental plans with infants and children 0-3 and/or their parents via individualized intervention sessions. Participates in updating and implementing the IFSP. Provide direct instruction to families and other caregivers on strategies to meet identified individualized needs and outcomes as written on the IFSP.
• Collaborates with multidisciplinary team to determine the best available service for the child/parent within the community.
• Educates parents about the child's strengths and weaknesses and developmental needs by participating in the Family Support Planning Process.
• Evaluates developmental progress as necessary to determine efficiency of interventions.

Additional information

This list of duties and responsibilities is not intended to be all-inclusive and may be expanded to include other duties or responsibilities as necessary.

Core Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in early childhood or early childhood/special education, child and family development, family life specialist, communication sciences, psychology, or social work is required or Master's degree preferred.
• Two years of relevant work experience required. At least one year of experience working with infants and/or toddlers with special needs and/or developmental delays and their families is required.
• Bilingual English/Creole preferred.

Any relevant education, certifications and/or work experience may be considered.

Pay and benefits

The University of Miami offers competitive salaries and a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, tuition remission and more.

UHealth-University of Miami Health System, South Florida's only university-based health system, provides leading-edge patient care powered by the ground breaking research and medical education at the Miller School of Medicine. As an academic medical center, we are proud to serve South Florida, Latin America and the Caribbean. Our physicians represent more than 100 specialties and sub-specialties, and have more than one million patient encounters each year. Our tradition of excellence has earned worldwide recognition for outstanding teaching, research and patient care. We're the challenge you've been looking for.

Job Status: Full time

Employee Type: Staff