Lead Family Coordinator

Title: Lead Family Coordinator

Comp- 80k/year

Entity- Open Roads Behavioral Health

About the role

Open Roads Behavioral Health is the clinical and programmatic partner to an initiative serving children, youth, and young adults from birth through age 21 who live with, or are at risk of, serious emotional disturbance. The Lead Family Coordinator is one of the program’s federally designated key personnel and carries the family voice into every level of the work, from the first phone call a parent makes to the Governance Board where decisions about the system of care are made.

What you will do

• Serve as the primary point of contact for families entering CareConnect Youth, helping them understand their options, prepare for appointments, and stay engaged in care.
• Deliver peer and family support grounded in your own experience raising a child with significant mental health needs.
• Help families navigate schools, Medicaid and commercial insurance, child welfare, juvenile justice, and other systems that touch their child’s life.
• Lead family engagement across all program sites, including parent education, support groups, and outreach in the communities we serve.
• Sit on the Governance Board and the program’s family and youth advisory structures, ensuring that families shape how the system of care is designed and evaluated.
• Recruit, train, and support additional family peer staff as the program grows.
• Partner with clinicians and care coordinators so that each family’s service plan reflects what the family actually wants.
• Contribute to required SAMHSA reporting and to the evaluation of the program.

What you bring

• Lived experience as the parent or primary caregiver of a child or youth who has received mental health services. This is a requirement of the federal award and is not negotiable.
• A working knowledge of the child-serving systems in Cook County, gained personally, professionally, or both.
• Strong listening skills and the ability to build trust quickly with families under stress.