Licensed Crisis Response Clinician – Onsite
Location: Phoenix / Maricopa County, Arizona
Work Setting: Primarily onsite, with limited follow-up counseling services that may be provided virtually when appropriate
Employment Type: PRN, Contract or Part-Time Opportunity
Schedule: Variable based on service needs; weekday daytime availability strongly preferred, with potential for designated on-call coverage
Required Licensure: Active Arizona LPC, LCSW, LMFT, Licensed Psychologist, or other approved independently licensed behavioral-health credential
Position Overview
We are seeking experienced, independently licensed behavioral-health clinicians to join a specialized onsite crisis-response and trauma-support team serving individuals and groups who may experience acute emotional distress following exposure to highly stressful, traumatic, sensitive, or emotionally challenging circumstances.
The clinician selected for this role must be comfortable responding onsite to institutional and professional environments, often with limited advance notice, and providing calm, structured, trauma-informed support to individuals or groups experiencing elevated stress.
Clinicians may be asked to provide immediate emotional stabilization, facilitate structured group support or debriefing, recognize signs of acute psychological distress, teach practical coping and emotional-regulation strategies, identify individuals who may benefit from additional counseling, and coordinate appropriate follow-up services.
The ideal candidate is clinically confident, composed under pressure, highly professional, skilled in group facilitation, experienced with trauma or crisis intervention, and capable of entering sensitive environments and quickly establishing psychological safety and rapport.
Key Responsibilities
Onsite Crisis Response
The clinician will:
- Respond onsite when behavioral-health support is requested following stressful, traumatic, emotionally challenging, or critical events.
- Maintain availability during agreed-upon or designated on-call periods.
- Respond promptly to dispatch communications and confirm availability within established response expectations.
- Travel to designated locations throughout the Phoenix/Maricopa County area when assigned.
- Arrive prepared to independently assess the immediate emotional-support needs of the individual or group.
- Establish a calm, professional and supportive presence in potentially high-stress environments.
- Coordinate appropriately with designated onsite personnel while maintaining professional clinical boundaries and confidentiality.
- Provide same-day onsite crisis or emotional-support services when required.
Group Crisis Support and Debriefing
The clinician must be comfortable working with groups and may be responsible for facilitating structured sessions generally lasting approximately 30–60 minutes.
Responsibilities may include:
- Facilitating trauma-informed group debriefing and emotional-support sessions.
- Helping participants transition from an emotionally intense experience back into their normal routines.
- Creating an environment in which participants feel safe, respected and supported without pressuring individuals to disclose information.
- Providing psychoeducation about common emotional and physiological reactions to stressful or traumatic experiences.
- Helping participants recognize normal stress responses following difficult events.
- Teaching evidence-informed coping techniques.
- Teaching grounding and emotional-regulation strategies.
- Supporting healthy transition and decompression following exposure to emotionally difficult material or events.
- Helping participants recognize when additional professional support may be beneficial.
- Maintaining appropriate boundaries between group support, psychoeducation, crisis intervention and formal psychotherapy.
The clinician must be able to manage different levels of distress within the same group while maintaining a structured and supportive environment.
Individual Crisis Support
Some circumstances may require brief one-on-one support before, during or following a group intervention.
The clinician may:
- Provide brief individual emotional stabilization.
- Assess the severity and immediacy of distress.
- Identify signs of acute anxiety, panic, emotional dysregulation, trauma-related reactions or other behavioral-health concerns.
- Conduct appropriate risk assessment when clinically indicated.
- Determine whether an individual requires additional behavioral-health intervention.
- Recommend appropriate next steps.
- Facilitate referral to additional counseling services when appropriate.
- Follow established emergency and escalation procedures when an individual presents an immediate safety concern.
Trauma-Informed Care
Clinicians must understand trauma-informed principles and be capable of applying them in real time.
Candidates should demonstrate the ability to:
- Recognize trauma and acute-stress responses.
- Avoid unnecessarily forcing or encouraging traumatic disclosure.
- Establish psychological safety.
- Support participant autonomy.
- Recognize emotional flooding, dissociation, panic and other acute reactions.
- Utilize grounding and stabilization techniques.
- Provide support without pathologizing normal emotional reactions.
- Recognize when symptoms exceed the scope of a brief group intervention.
- Make appropriate referrals for additional care.
Crisis Assessment and Escalation
Clinicians must be prepared to recognize and appropriately respond to behavioral-health emergencies.
This may include:
- Suicidal ideation.
- Statements involving self-harm.
- Severe panic or acute anxiety.
- Significant emotional dysregulation.
- Dissociation.
- Severe grief reactions.
- Acute trauma responses.
- Significant impairment in functioning.
- Threats toward others.
- Other behavioral-health emergencies requiring additional intervention.
The clinician will be expected to use sound professional judgment, follow established emergency protocols, communicate appropriately with designated personnel when required, and maintain documentation consistent with professional, legal and organizational standards.
Follow-Up Counseling and Referral Support
When clinically appropriate, clinicians may assist individuals with transitioning from brief onsite support to follow-up behavioral-health services.
Responsibilities may include:
- Explaining available counseling resources.
- Conducting appropriate clinical referrals.
- Assisting with scheduling or warm handoffs when appropriate.
- Providing individual counseling sessions when assigned and credentialed to do so.
- Coordinating follow-up care while maintaining confidentiality.
- Recognizing situations requiring a higher level of care or a specialized behavioral-health provider.
Documentation
Clinicians must be comfortable completing concise, accurate and timely documentation.
Depending upon the assignment, documentation may include:
- Date of service.
- Arrival and departure time.
- Duration of service.
- Type of intervention provided.
- Group-support or debriefing activity.
- Number of individuals served.
- Referrals provided.
- Follow-up recommendations.
- Incident-related documentation.
- Required service logs.
- Other administrative information necessary for program reporting.
Clinical documentation must maintain appropriate confidentiality and avoid unnecessary disclosure of sensitive information.
Confidentiality and Professional Conduct
This position involves work in highly sensitive and confidential environments.
Clinicians must:
- Maintain strict professional confidentiality.
- Follow applicable HIPAA requirements.
- Follow Arizona behavioral-health laws and professional standards.
- Follow applicable mandatory-reporting requirements.
- Comply with organizational and site-specific confidentiality procedures.
- Maintain appropriate professional boundaries.
- Exercise discretion regarding sensitive information.
- Refrain from discussing assignments, participants, incidents or confidential information outside authorized settings.
- Demonstrate mature professional judgment in environments where privacy, discretion and public trust are especially important.
Required Qualifications
Candidates must meet all of the following minimum requirements:
- Master's degree or doctoral degree in counseling, social work, marriage and family therapy, psychology or a closely related behavioral-health field.
- Active behavioral-health license in the State of Arizona in good standing.
- Independently licensed clinician strongly required.
- LPC, LCSW or LMFT strongly preferred.
- Licensed psychologists may also be considered.
- Demonstrated behavioral-health clinical experience.
- Demonstrated understanding of trauma-informed care.
- Ability to work independently in onsite environments.
- Ability to maintain composure during emotionally intense situations.
- Strong interpersonal and verbal communication skills.
- Strong professional judgment.
- Ability to facilitate structured conversations with groups.
- Ability to recognize acute behavioral-health concerns.
- Ability to work effectively with individuals from diverse cultural, socioeconomic and professional backgrounds.
- Ability to maintain strict confidentiality.
- Ability to complete required documentation accurately and promptly.
- Reliable transportation.
- Ability and willingness to travel to designated onsite locations throughout the Phoenix/Maricopa County metropolitan area.
- Reliable telephone and electronic communication access.
- Ability to respond promptly when assigned or placed on designated on-call coverage.
- Ability to pass any applicable background, credentialing or site-access requirements.
Strongly Preferred Experience
Applicants will be particularly competitive if they possess professional experience in one or more of the following areas:
- Crisis intervention.
- Mobile crisis response.
- Behavioral-health crisis services.
- Trauma counseling.
- Acute stress response.
- Critical incident response.
- Critical Incident Stress Management or similar programs.
- Employee Assistance Programs.
- Emergency behavioral health.
- Hospital emergency departments.
- Psychiatric crisis assessment.
- First responder behavioral health.
- Law-enforcement or public-safety behavioral health.
- Victim services.
- Grief and bereavement counseling.
- Disaster behavioral health.
- Community crisis response.
- Group psychotherapy.
- Group psychoeducation.
- Trauma-focused treatment.
- Forensic behavioral health.
- Court-related behavioral health.
- High-acuity outpatient behavioral health.
- Suicide-risk assessment.
- Psychological First Aid.
- Structured group debriefing.
Group Facilitation Experience Strongly Preferred
Because this position may involve supporting multiple individuals simultaneously, strong group-management skills are highly desirable.
Candidates should be comfortable:
- Speaking confidently to groups.
- Providing structure without becoming overly rigid.
- Managing multiple emotional reactions simultaneously.
- Redirecting conversations appropriately.
- Working with individuals who may not voluntarily seek behavioral-health services.
- Maintaining participant boundaries.
- Supporting distressed individuals without allowing one participant's needs to unintentionally overwhelm the entire group.
- Remaining calm when strong emotions are expressed.
- Communicating complex behavioral-health concepts in straightforward, nonclinical language.
Ideal Candidate Profile
The ideal clinician is someone who can receive an assignment, travel to an unfamiliar professional environment, receive a brief situational overview and confidently facilitate an appropriate behavioral-health intervention without requiring extensive preparation.
A strong candidate will be:
- Calm.
- Emotionally grounded.
- Dependable.
- Highly professional.
- Clinically confident.
- Trauma informed.
- Comfortable with ambiguity.
- Adaptable.
- Compassionate without becoming emotionally overwhelmed.
- Comfortable leading groups.
- Comfortable making independent clinical decisions.
- Able to communicate effectively with both participants and organizational leadership.
- Able to recognize when immediate support is sufficient and when additional treatment or emergency intervention is warranted.
Onsite Requirement
This is an onsite response position.
Applicants should apply only if they are willing and able to physically report to designated locations within the Phoenix/Maricopa County area when assigned.
This position should not be considered fully remote.
Although some follow-up counseling or administrative activities may potentially occur virtually, the central responsibility of this position involves in-person behavioral-health response and support.
Candidates must have reliable transportation and the flexibility necessary to respond to onsite assignments during their agreed-upon availability periods.
Availability
This is expected to operate primarily as a PRN.
Service needs may vary considerably from week to week.
Clinicians may be asked to identify specific periods during which they are willing to serve as:
- Primary on-call clinician.
- Secondary/backup clinician.
- Emergency or overflow clinician.
Candidates who have flexibility during normal weekday business hours are strongly encouraged to apply.
Additional evening or after-hours availability is helpful but is not necessarily required for every clinician.
Geographic Availability
Candidates located in or near the following areas are particularly encouraged to apply:
- Phoenix.
- Central Phoenix.
- Downtown Phoenix.
- Scottsdale.
- Tempe.
- Mesa.
- Chandler.
- Glendale.
- Peoria.
- Other communities within reasonable travel distance of central and regional Maricopa County locations.
Professional Liability and Credentialing
Selected clinicians may be required to provide:
- Current Arizona professional license.
- License verification.
- Professional résumé/CV.
- Relevant certifications.
- Proof of professional liability coverage when applicable.
- Background information necessary for credentialing.
- References.
- Documentation of relevant crisis or trauma training.
- Other documents necessary for organizational or site credentialing.
Why This Opportunity Is Different
This role offers independently licensed clinicians an opportunity to use their skills outside the traditional outpatient therapy environment.
The work is well suited for clinicians who enjoy:
- Crisis response.
- Brief intervention.
- Trauma-informed care.
- Group facilitation.
- High-impact behavioral-health work.
- Community-based service.
- Working independently.
- Providing support during meaningful and emotionally complex situations.
The position may complement an existing private practice, outpatient position, consulting role or other professional schedule for clinicians who have flexible weekday availability.
Application Requirements
When applying, candidates are encouraged to provide a résumé detailing:
- Current Arizona behavioral-health license.
- Years of post-licensure clinical experience.
- Crisis-intervention experience.
- Trauma-related experience.
- Group-facilitation experience.
- Mobile or onsite-response experience.
- Availability during weekday business hours.
- General geographic location within the Phoenix metropolitan area.
- Any critical-incident, trauma, crisis, suicide-assessment, Psychological First Aid, CISM or related training.
Pay: $65.00 - $75.00 per hour
Work Location: In person
