Youth Psychotherapist

ABOUT PA’LANTE: Rooted in Holyoke, MA, Pa’lante Transformative Justice builds youth power to heal and transform interpersonal harm and systemic injustices. More info: www.palanteholyoke.org

POSITION OVERVIEW: The Youth Psychotherapist provides high-quality, trauma-informed, holistic, youth-friendly, anti-oppressive therapeutic services for Pa’lante youth, with an emphasis on those impacted by violence. This position also builds strong community and family partnerships to co-create and coordinate communities of care, and supports our staff team to better serve the mental health needs of our youth. The ideal candidate understands that mental health is connected to systemic oppression, and is invested in supporting their clients’ self determination and in decolonizing their own therapy practice. This is a new position and will require flexibility, adaptability and creativity. There is room to grow! Our vision is to build a robust mental health and wellness program at Pa’lante and the Youth Psychotherapist has the potential to grow into a leadership role with this work.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Individual, Family & Group Therapy

1. Provide onsite clinical services that align with Pa’lante’s values, including maintaining a caseload of individual therapy clients and offering regular support groups, circles and psychoeducational workshops. Therapist is responsible for building their caseload by developing relationships with Pa’lante youth and working with partner organizations.
2. Collaborate with parents, families and community supports to provide integrated, wraparound supports to youth
3. Assessment and treatment of suicidal ideation, crisis intervention and safety planning aligned with Pa’lante’s values
4. Coordination, recruitment & co- facilitation of Mindful Rage, Pa’lante’s youth-designed, youth-led alternative anger management training. Train and support youth co-facilitators.
5. Build and maintain referral networks and conduct outreach to increase access to therapeutic services, with particular attention to youth impacted by the criminal legal system, foster care, violence, & school push out
6. Maintain compliant documentation of progress notes, treatment plans, and keep all records up to date. Meet a weekly target of 20 billable hours per week.
7. Work with Co-Executive Director to build out Pa’lante’s mental health vision, services, and infrastructure.

Supervision & Leadership Development

1. All Pa’lante staff are expected to find opportunities to support and develop Pa’lante youth leaders. This may include supervising youth staff, facilitating portions of youth leadership meetings, involving youth co-facilitators whenever possible.
2. Provide support and training to the Pa’lante staff team to effectively support youth with their mental health challenges
3. If licensed, supervise MSW graduate interns and maintain positive relationships with partner MSW programs. If unlicensed, provide support to MSW interns.

Organization Wide Responsibilities

1. Support with planning and hosting community events
2. Coordinate and host restorative/transformative processes using indigenous circle practice to prevent and respond to conflict, as well as to help youth grieve, celebrate, and support one another.
3. Facilitate and be present in our youth drop-in space, including: impromptu 1-1 support, facilitating informal relationship building activities; supervising youth-drop in space and building rapport with new youth (approximately 4 hrs/week)
4. Actively participate in supervision meetings, engage in positive coaching relationship, seek out and incorporate feedback
5. Seek out and engage in trainings and networking with other organizations to increase personal and organizational knowledge

QUALIFICATIONS:

If you have just some of the skills listed below, or others we failed to list, please consider applying for this position. We are a small, nimble organization that makes the best use of the skills of its staff and is dedicated to their professional development.

• This position requires a Master's Degree in Psychology, Social Work, Marriage and Family Therapy, Counseling, or a related subject area.
• Clinical license (LICSW, LMFT, LMHC), preferred but not required. If unlicensed, clinician must be willing to obtain LICSW within two years of hire (supervision and support available).
• Demonstrated commitment to challenging racism and other systems of oppression
• Commitment to shared leadership and decision making
• Demonstrated love and respect for young people of color
• Minimum 3 years experience working with people with serious mental health concerns and people who have been impacted by the criminal legal system and school pushout
• Minimum 2 years of related experience providing crisis intervention, case management, group therapy, individual therapy
• Excellent project management, time-management, priority setting and organizational skills
• Excellent supervisory skills, including enthusiasm and skill in working with and developing young staff
• Team player and capable of working independently and collaboratively.
• Experience with some or all of the following, preferred: community organizing, public speaking, training design and facilitation, youth development, restorative/transformative justice, program design/development, strategic planning
• Lived experience navigating mental health challenges and systemic oppression, preferred
• Clinical supervisory experience, preferred
• Bilingual in Spanish, strongly preferred
• Connection to Holyoke, preferred

COMMITMENT/EXPECTATIONS: This is an in-person position. Pa’lante has a 35-hour workweek and offers a flexible schedule. Our youth drop-in hours are Mon-Fri 3-7PM, and the Youth Psychotherapist will need to be present for most of those hours in order to reach youth who are in school during the day. Because our youth need consistent adults in their life, we are asking the Youth Psychotherapist to commit to 3-5 years with Pa’lante barring unforeseen circumstances (no contractual obligation, just a good faith commitment).

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS: $65-75k plus very generous benefits, including:

• 5 weeks paid agency closure time (2 weeks in the summer, 2 weeks in the winter and one week for Thanksgiving/Day of Mourning) plus 13 flexible vacation days and 10 sick/wellness days accrued annually.
• Medical/dental insurance is covered at 80% for individuals and 70% for a family. Vision insurance is covered at 100%.
• Employees enrolled in our insurance plan receive an HRA card funded at $3,000 per year for individuals and $6,000 per year for families to use toward eligible medical expenses (copays, prescriptions, mental health services). This is essentially untaxed “free money” provided by the employer to cover health-related expenses.
• Employer sponsored retirement plan with a 3% match.
• Annual $1500 raise, revenue permitting

HOW TO APPLY: Please send resumé, cover letter, and two professional references to: luke@palanteholyoke.org. Please write “Youth Psychotherapist" in the email subject line and include your first and last name on all file names – i.e. “Maria Morales Resume.pdf”. We will review applications on a rolling basis starting in February 2026.

• 5 weeks paid agency closure time (2 weeks in the summer, 2 weeks in the winter and one week for Thanksgiving/Day of Mourning) plus 13 flexible vacation days and 10 sick/wellness days accrued annually.
• Medical/dental insurance is covered at 80% for individuals and 70% for a family. Vision insurance is covered at 100%.
• Employees enrolled in our insurance plan receive an HRA card funded at $3,000 per year for individuals and $6,000 per year for families to use toward eligible medical expenses (copays, prescriptions, mental health services). This is essentially untaxed “free money” provided by the employer to cover health-related expenses.
• Employer sponsored retirement plan with a 3% match.

Bilingual in Spanish, strongly preferred.