Experience

Kern County

• United States
• Government Administration
• 700 & Above Employee

• Behavioral Health Recovery Specialist

  • Jun 2014 - Present

  Forensic Services TeamProvide comprehensive, community-based treatment, rehabilitation, and support to persons with serious and persistent mental illnesses and/or personality disorders with severe functional impairments AND who are on Felony Probation, Parole, or facing other legal issues. Responsibility for high acuity, sensitive cases that include persons determined gravely disabled appointed to conservatorship, persons under 180-day holds, incompetent to stand trial, court ordered mental health services, and/or transitional age youth in high-level adult residential facilities homes or hospital settings. Operate as the Kern Medical Center IPU, Good Sam Hospital and Crestwood Behavioral Health-Mental Health Rehabilitative Center (MHRC) liaison for Forensic Services Team. (The MHRC is one of Kern County’s acute psychiatric, long-term inpatient facilities. I am tasked with providing weekly visits to the facility, meet with administrators, line staff, and clients to interview and assess the client’s readiness to stand trial and to discharge to a community placement). Under supervision, partner with consumers/families with mental illness and/or substance abuse to achieve recovery; actively engage consumers/family to determine what services and support will assist in reaching their personal recovery goals considering the consumer/family’s unique needs and preferences. Develop, deliver, and evaluate recovery-focused mental health and case management services. Participates in individual, family, and group counseling. Perform crisis intervention counseling. Participate in interdisciplinary team consultations to prepare consumers for successful discharge from hospitals, group homes, or institutions to the community; Advocate for decreasing stigma associated with mental illness and/or substance



California State University, Bakersfield

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Professor

  • Mar 2017 - Present