Team Lead

 

Description:

The Team Lead delivers frontline, relationship-based support while providing day-to-day leadership, mentorship, and operational guidance to Youth Support Specialists. The role ensures safe, consistent, high-quality service delivery through staff support, shift coordination, and clinical guidance in complex situations.
Responsibilities include assessments, individualized service and placement planning, collaboration with youth, families, kinship networks, and community partners, and supporting safe, sustainable, non-exploitative living environments.
All work is grounded in trauma-informed, survivor-centered, anti-oppressive, culturally responsive, and harm reduction approaches, recognizing the disproportionate impact of exploitation on Indigenous, racialized, 2SLGBTQIA+, and marginalized youth.

Duties and Responsibilities:

 Specialized Youth Survivor Support
• Build trusting, non-judgmental relationships with youth. 

• Provide intensive one-to-one support to youth experiencing or at risk of trafficking and exploitation. 

• Support autonomy, safety planning, emotional regulation, and crisis stabilization. 

• Facilitate life skills, psychoeducational, and culturally responsive programming. 

• Maintain a safe, clean, supportive household environment, including household tasks as needed. 

Assessment & Exploitation-Focused Planning
• Conduct ongoing assessments related to trafficking risk, coercion, trauma, mental health, substance use, and family/kinship supports. 

• Develop and update individualized service and safety plans. 

• Address risks related to traffickers, online grooming, housing, transportation, and financial vulnerabilities. 

• Respond to crises using trauma-informed and non-violent de-escalation approaches. 

Case Management & System Navigation
• Complete intakes, documentation, service planning, and placement coordination. 

• Support access to healthcare, housing, education, legal, cultural, and income supports. 

• Advocate alongside youth while respecting autonomy and choice. 

• Coordinate with community partners to ensure continuity of care and reduce re-traumatization. 

Documentation & Administration
• Maintain accurate, timely, trauma-informed documentation. 

• Ensure confidentiality and compliance with legislation and policy. 

• Review staff documentation for quality and accuracy. 

• Participate in supervision, team meetings, and specialized training. 

Leadership & Operations
• Provide mentorship, coaching, and daily leadership to Youth Support Specialists. 

• Support onboarding, training, and staff development. 

• Coordinate daily operations, staffing, and task assignments. 

• Monitor adherence to policies, procedures, and documentation standards. 

• Foster a positive, collaborative, and accountable team environment. 

Clinical Support & Risk Management
• Guide staff on risk assessment, safety planning, and exploitation-related concerns. 

• Support responses to crises, missing-from-care incidents, and high-risk situations. 

• Liaise with the Program Manager regarding critical incidents and escalations. 

Community Engagement & Representation
• Build partnerships with child welfare, Indigenous organizations, healthcare, education, housing, and trafficking-specific services. 

• Participate in coordinated community responses and committees. 

• Promote awareness of anti-trafficking pathways and supports. 

On-Call & Organizational Contribution
• Participate in an on-call rotation (stipend provided). 

• Respond to urgent after-hours situations and staff support needs. 

• Contribute to program development and continuous improvement. 

• Uphold agency values, ethics, and policies.
 
Placement Pathways & Reconnection
• Lead development of safe, non-exploitative placement pathways for youth exiting or disrupting trafficking situations 

• Prioritize placement options that reduce risk of re-exploitation, including: 

o Family reunification (where safe and desired) 

o Kinship or customary care 

o Community-based placements with appropriate trafficking informed and culturally responsive supports 

• Engage families, kinship and caregivers using a strengths-based, trauma-informed, and anti-oppressive approach 

• Support mediation, reconnection, and relationship repair where appropriate 

• Collaborate closely with child welfare, housing, justice, education, and trafficking specific partners to coordinate transitions and placement stability

Skills & Competencies
• Strong knowledge of human trafficking, sexual exploitation, coercive control, trauma bonding, and gender-based violence. 

• Ability to apply trauma-informed, survivor-centered, anti-oppressive, and culturally responsive practices. 

• Understanding of colonization, intergenerational trauma, and systemic inequities impacting youth. 

• Strong crisis intervention, de-escalation, communication, leadership, and documentation skills. 

• Ability to assess and respond to complex safety concerns. 

• Strong organizational, decision-making, and team coordination abilities.