Environmental Health & Safety Specialist

SUMMARY

This position is responsible for conducting ongoing Environmental Health and safety assessments of early childhood settings, including childcare centers and family childcare homes. Responsibilities include developing and implementing health and safety assessment tool that is aligned with federal and local regulations and standards, provide assistance and resources for staff, family, and childcare partners, and provide training and technical assistance to ensure health and safe environment for all children and families enrolled in the program.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Support and promote the mission of the Agency: Foothill Family empowers children and families to achieve success in relationships, school, and work through community-based services that advance growth and development.
• Assists the Health Manager in the development, and implementation of Health and Safety Policies and Procedures.
• Creates/identifies a health and safety checklist that addresses the Federal, State and Local health and health and safety requirements. Uses the checklist to monitor health/safety practices at client homes and childcare homes and childcare centers based on the above regulations and standards.
• Aggregates the information gathered through the Health and Safety monitoring and conducts analysis to ensure that all environmental, Health & Safety policies, procedures, rules, and regulations are adhered.
• Works with staff to develop action plans addressing Environmental Health and safety needs.
• Verifies the action plans identify timelines, actions, and person(s) responsible for correcting the findings. Gathers updates from the staff on progress made towards corrections.
• Monitors action plans for corrections and assurance of sustainability.
• Provides educational trainings and consultations to staff and childcare partners on Environmental Health and safety.
• Serves as a liaison to external health and safety experts and arranges in bringing such experts to support Foothill’s compliance on continuous quality improvement on the area of Environmental Health and safety.
• Reviews the incident/accident tracking logs and ensures all incident/accidents are documented, investigated and improvements or corrective actions implemented as/where applicable.
• Prepares quarterly reports with aggregated and analyzed data related to health and safety.
• Assists in the integration of other Early Head Start Service areas with Health Services, specifically, with Environmental Health and safety to assure and demonstrate an understanding of how service areas interrelate to provide comprehensive child and family services.
• Attends in-service Health Service Advisory Committee meetings to gain recommendations and information from the community experts to inform the program decisions.
• Attends ongoing trainings as well as community-based health education and preventative health promotion.
• Displays sensitivity to the service population’s cultural and socioeconomics characteristics.

POSITION REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor’s Degree in related field of Child Development or Public Health, or associate degree and two (2) years of work experience in related field.
• Possesses knowledge of and stays current with HSPPS (Head Start Program Performance Standards), CCLD (Community Care Licensing Division), Title V regulations, and Caring for Our Children Standards preferred.
• Access to reliable transportation to travel between sites, centers, and family childcare homes.
• Knowledge of health and safety assessment tools.
• Ability to gather, analyze and report on key health and safety data/statistics.
• Excellent verbal, written communication, and presentation skills.
• Excellent planning, organizational and time management skills.
• Ability to work co-operatively with others to complete tasks and implement process improvements.
• Valid CA Driver’s License and maintains insurability on the Agency’s auto liability policy (including a minimum of 2 years driving experience after receiving license) and maintains the California state required auto insurance liability limits.
• CPR/First Aid certified.
• Bilingual English/Spanish required.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.