Cooper House Clinical Director Role

Posting Date: February 1, 2024 

Cooper House is an infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) clinic in Seattle, WA that provides integrated mental health and occupational therapy to children birth-5 and their families. We also provide support for birth-5 providers in our community through reflective supervision and training, including Facilitating Attuned Interactions (FAN) training throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska.

Our next Clinical Director will have the opportunity to guide the clinical team to fully realize the power of our collaborative model, and to provide strategic thought partnership both within Cooper House and across the IECMH field. The Clinical Director will provide leadership to deliver relationship-based services to families based on their unique needs, strengths, culture, and values. The Clinical Director will also have an important community-facing presence, with opportunities to collaborate and leverage connections to strengthen and expand the reach of the program, and to share our team’s work with the birth-to-five provider community locally and nationally. 

We seek a reflective supervisor, strategic thinker, and an inclusive manager, with a strong commitment to equity who is passionate about our mission and values. This position requires an advanced degree with clinical credentials, and a solid grounding in and commitment to the principles of infant and early childhood mental health. Within this context, we know that effective leaders can come from all kinds of roles and backgrounds, and we are excited to meet people who see their experience, strengths, and values reflected in the leadership and management qualifications for this role!

Applications submitted by February 29, 2024 will be given full consideration. Interviewing is anticipated in March; early applications are strongly encouraged.

This is a full-time salaried position requiring a willingness to work occasional evenings and weekends and travel a few times a year. The expected salary range is between $140,000 - $165,000, depending on qualifications and experience. 

Organizational Overview

Our Mission: Cooper House supports the social emotional development of young children and increases family well-being by partnering with caregivers to strengthen early relationships and by building the skills and effectiveness of the IECMH workforce.

We envision a community where:

• Babies and young children feel valued and understood.

• Caregivers feel successful and supported.

• Caregivers and children build relationships fueled by trust, enjoyment, and mutual understanding.

• Professional colleagues get support developing their own skills and capacities as they help young children and families.

We strive to:

• Be accountable: we are accountable to the families with young children in our communities, both those who seek us out and those we are not yet reaching. We are also accountable to our professional community and to each other. We strive to define common goals, invite feedback, listen deeply, and apply our learning. Above all, we are committed to ensuring that those we serve find value in our work.

• Honor relationships: we believe in the transformative power of relationships for healing and growth. Fostering curiosity, compassion, trust, and mutual delight are both the means and the end of our work. We accept that ruptures happen and embrace the productive struggle that leads to repair and growth.

• Insist on equity: optimal development for children is only possible in a just and equitable community - where all children, families, and practitioners are free from oppression and able to reach their full potential. We hold ourselves accountable to eradicate oppression in our relationships, professional practice, and the systems we interact with.

• Embrace complexity: we value the unique complexities of each child, caregiver, and professional. Supporting their growth involves encouraging the integration of mind, brain, and body - within the complex social and cultural systems they inhabit. This requires the thoughtful integration of multiple perspectives and bodies of knowledge, while remaining open to what we don’t yet understand.

• Embody reflection: we compassionately attune to ourselves through continual consideration, mindfulness, study, and personal growth in order to shed light on what motivates our thinking, assumptions and biases, and we model a reflective stance with clients and colleagues. We choose to risk being vulnerable in order to find meaning and connection with clients and with each other. 

Commitment to Equity

Putting our values into action, we strive to ensure young children and the people who care for them can access support within a just and equitable community. We are in an intentional process of building a diverse and inclusive organization. Highlights from recent years include: launching a FAN grant program, providing FAN en Español, allocating resources so BIPOC staff can access individual reflective consultation with BIPOC providers, and conducting a welcoming and belonging environmental review of our buildings.

In the spirit of transparency, Cooper House was founded by a white woman and is led by an Executive Director who is a white woman. The field of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health emerged within the institutions and culture of a deficit-based medical model that perpetuates oppression and pathologizes symptoms of trauma. One of our strategies to disrupt this status quo is to elevate the voices of staff, clients, and participants most impacted by oppression. We are also building a team where staff with more privilege are expected to hold humility and share power. The diversity of our team does not currently match the diversity of our clients, participants, and the region that we serve, though we are making progress. We expect that all team members live out diversity, equity, and inclusion values in their practice.

Cooper House Equity and Social Justice Team facilitates efforts to increase the capacity of our people, practices, and policies to lead from an intersectional lens of social justice and equity. This team is made up of 10 employees, with a plan that is updated annually to support learning and action by the whole organization.

Clinical Program

Our clinical program currently serves 100 families a year, across a wide range of identities and family structures. We offer services in both Spanish and English and are committed to providing accessible and welcoming programs, interrupting financial barriers and stigma associated with accessing infant and early childhood mental healthcare. We understand that families are experiencing complex challenges and can feel isolated as they seek to improve their well-being. Our team meets families where they are, from a place of curiosity, humility, and compassion. We help families know they are not alone, in spite of trauma and oppressive systems, during the most important years of their child’s life.

Therapists provide services that reflect the interplay of mind, brain, and body, respecting development within the family’s social and cultural context to enhance relationships and promote healing. In our unique integrated clinical model, occupational therapists and mental health therapists work in close collaboration during the assessment and case formulation process, partnering with families to learn about their unique history, strengths, and challenges. Service delivery may include a combination of individual discipline-specific interventions, collaborative intervention sessions for the child or the dyad, caregiver-only sessions, consultation and collaboration with other professionals who interact with the family, and/or behind-the-scenes professional consultation to support a colleague’s transdisciplinary thinking. At the heart of our work are the principles of IECMH and the Diversity Tenets, to which we add various theoretical and technical models of development and change to support our work, including: attachment theory, DIR/Floortime, sensory integration, Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics, trauma-responsive work, child-parent psychotherapy, occupational therapy principles, psychodynamic theories, Facilitating Attuned Interactions (FAN), and others.

Utilizing the Facilitating Attuned Interactions model, our team provides Fussy Baby services to families with concerns about their baby’s temperament and behavior during the first year of life. Short term support is provided through our phone line or home visits.

Position Opportunities & Responsibilities 

This role will be an extraordinary opportunity for a leader who is excited about working in a highly collaborative environment. Our clinical program has grown in depth and breadth over the past few years, and we are eager to expand our reach to make our services more accessible to families with very young children, especially those who are most impacted by systems of oppression and trauma. We want to build our capacity to serve more clients, while keeping the integrity of our model through strong collaboration between therapists and organizational leadership. Our next Clinical Director will have a powerful opportunity to grow our impact.

The Clinical Director will report to the Executive Director. The Clinical Director’s primary areas of responsibility include:

• Strategy: ensure services achieve our mission so that young children are supported in their development, family well-being is increased, and relationships are strengthened; lead strategic direction for the clinical program.

• Program Management: set service delivery goals and support team to achieve them; manage program operations, program budget of $1.7 million, day-to-day administrative systems for client assignment, and caseload management; facilitate program evaluation.

• Community Engagement: build visibility of our work within the IECMH and birth-to-five sector; engage in advocacy, education, and coalition efforts focused on Cooper House priorities; build partnerships with families and organizations.

• Leadership & Supervision: lead, coach, and retain the 12 members of the clinical team with a focus on strengthening collaborative relationships to build team cohesion and developing leaders within the IECMH field. Serve on the Cooper House Equity and Social Justice Team to advance equity throughout the organization. Supervise four senior clinicians who provide clinical supervision to therapists and carry their own caseloads. Support the refinement and implementation of the integrated clinical model.

In a given week, the Clinical Director may lead and manage a variety of responsibilities such as: attend a community event to connect with families with young children in King County; manage client assignments for our team of therapists to best serve families with complex needs; collaborate with the operations team to ensure client intake and records are effectively managed; visit a local early learning organization to explore a partnership opportunity within the IECMH community; provide reflective supervision to their four direct reports; and facilitate a clinical team meeting to provide space for reflection, learning and collaboration.

Candidate Qualifications

Candidates must have an interest and solid grounding in the principles of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health, Occupational Therapy and/or family therapy. Candidates are required to possess an advanced degree in occupational therapy or behavioral sciences and must be eligible for licensure to practice in the state of WA as one of the following: Psychologist, Mental Health Counselor, Occupational Therapist, Marriage and Family Therapist Counselor, Advanced Social Worker, or Independent Clinical Social Worker. We are seeking candidates who are eligible for WA-AIMH Endorsement at the Mentor level.

Beyond these core credentials, we seek candidates who possess many of the following skills and characteristics, and who are able to identify where they will need to further develop. We anticipate that our next Clinical Director will: 

• Embody the words of Jeree Pawl, “How you are is as important as what you do.” We are looking for candidates with experience providing reflective supervision and the ability to be a sturdy leader, who bring curiosity, cognitive flexibility, and the humility to listen deeply, learn from mistakes, challenge the status quo, and be responsive to their team. Our next Clinical Director should bring emotional intelligence paired with analytical thinking to bridge reflective learning with decision-making and action.

• Be passionate about advancing our Integrated Clinical Model, guiding the implementation of the delivery of healing centered, culturally respectful services for families, and enhancing the capacity and skill of the team to integrate mind, brain, and body to strengthen relationships and disrupt the deficit-based medical model that perpetuates oppression and pathologizes symptoms of trauma. 

• Bring a strong commitment to anti-racism and an intersectional approach in their leadership and the ability to operationalize equity as central to our work. 

• Be a strategic thought leader and relationship builder, who can build mutually beneficial community partnerships, listen deeply to community voices, share compelling stories, and co-create opportunities to promote child and family well-being. 

• Be an inclusive manager, who can communicate direction, goals, roles and expectations, and hold themselves and their team accountable to learning and improving; who prioritizes deep relationship and trust as the foundation of our work; and who can draw on the strengths, expertise and intersectional identities each person contributes to a strong team. The successful candidate will have facilitation and presentation skills that make space for multiple ways of communicating, inviting learning, attunement, and cohesion.

• Possess exceptional planning and organizational skills to effectively manage administrative systems, and provide thought partnership to improve the processes that underpin our work and its impact.

Compensation and Benefits

This is a full-time salaried position requiring a willingness to work occasional evenings and weekends and travel a few times a year. The expected salary range is between $140,000 - $165,000, depending on qualifications and experience. 

Cooper House offers generous benefits including: 

• Flexible paid time off from work for vacation, sick and safety time. During the first three years of employment, employees are eligible to earn 25 days of Paid Time Off (PTO) leave each year, plus 12 paid holidays annually. Every three years, employees are allocated an additional 40 hours of PTO. Cooper House also provides one week of paid wellness leave from December 25-January 1, and dates of respect on which we avoid planning events, meetings, etc for different holidays.

• Medical, dental and vision insurance are offered to employees and their families, with 100% of premiums paid by Cooper House, and are provided through the Regence Preferred Platinum (medical), Regence Expressions (dental), and VSP (vision) plans. 

• A Simple IRA retirement plan administered through Morgan Stanley, with an employer matching contribution up to 3% of salary.

• A professional development fund of $600 per employee annually, and membership to WA-AIMH. 

• Remote work options, a flexible work schedule, and paid parenting and bereavement leave.

• Relocation funds to support a Clinical Director moving to the Seattle area from out of state.

Workplace Accessibility:

The Clinical Director will be able to arrange a hybrid work schedule with the Executive Director. An office is provided at our 225 14th Ave E location where they will be expected to work at least 50% of their hours. 

Cooper House has two locations that are 167 ft apart in Capitol Hill, Seattle. There are sidewalks in front of both locations, along with ramps built for strollers that are not designed for wheelchair use. One location has an elevator that accesses 3 floors but does not reach the top floor. The other 2-story location does not have an elevator. Cooper House is committed to providing reasonable accommodations so the Clinical Director will not need to access the top floor of both buildings.

How to Apply

We welcome applications from all individuals, and we assert our commitment to providing an equitable and inclusive workplace. Cooper House strongly encourages Black, Indigenous, and People of Color; people with disabilities; and LGBTQ+ people to apply. 

Online applications only, please no email or paper submissions. You will be asked to upload a cover letter and resume. In your cover letter, please describe how your experience, interests, and values are a fit with the Clinical  Director role as described in this announcement. 

Applications received by February 29, 2024 will be given full consideration; early applications are strongly encouraged! All applications will be acknowledged via an email receipt. Consideration will be given to applications as soon as they are received; phone and in-person interviewing is anticipated to begin in early March.

Questions regarding this opportunity are welcomed and can be directed to:

Sarah Cody Roth, Search Consultant, Clover Search Works (contact information in full announcement)