Youth Villages Employee Reviews about "youth villages"

Pros

I love everything about Youth Villages.

Cons

There are no cons in my opinion.

Pros

- Pay is good for a social work position - Fulfilling work

Cons

- The company is incredibly anti union. When work got out that workers were trying to unionize, instead of trying to determine why, the company doubled down on an anti union campaign, spreading blatant anti-union information (some of which was downright untrue). They spread an environment of fear, which was confusing since the company touts wanting to support its employees. And what's worse, our two biggest "customers" (DCF and DMH) are both unionized and workers from both organizations have highlighted how much the working conditions have improved since they unionized. - There is literally no work life balance. Your supervisors will encourage you to maintain it but we are still expected to get everything in on time, see all of our kids, drive to and from and attend all of our meetings. It's entirely unsustainable. The turnover is absolutely absurd. I've been here less than 6 months and I've already seen 5 people from just my office leave for other opportunities because of the aforementioned issue. - Case loads can be absurd. We can carry up to 10 young adults in Life Set and, if you're lucky, you may only need to see them once a week but more likely than not, you'll be seeing at least half of them twice a week, meaning you somehow need to have 15 sessions a week, get your documentation and treatment plans done, attend all necessary meetings and trainings and avoid working over 40 hours a week. - There is not a lot of clinical skills training. They will train you how to use our intervention resource to find an intervention to use with your client but there is not training on how to implement the intervention with fidelity. The resource offers step by step instructions but for those who come from a non-clinical background, that often is not enough. - Our clinical judgement is often ignored. We are told to put things into our treatment plans or do things with clients that we often know are going to be triggering or unsuccessful but we are required to do so. It makes building rapport and maintaining engagement that much more difficult. - When it comes to diversity and inclusion, Youth Villages may talk the talk but they do not walk the walk. Upper management is overwhelming white folks, there has been an ongoing struggle to get paperwork updated to reflect the plethora of pronouns and gender identities that exist and the gate keeping that occurs around what can and cannot be discussed during "culture crews" is astonishing. - Management encourages you to bring your concerns to them but nothing gets done about them. Some managers even go as far as to say that they used to bring the same feedback to their supervisors when they were on the ground staff. And yet, nothing has been done to change any of these concerns despite their repeated occurrence.

Pros

*The pay for an agency in this field for a pre-licensed person is great. Additionally, in about a year, I had three raises- one of them being a performance review raise. *You get paid for no-shows/cancellations, which doesn't happen in community mental health seeing people for therapy. *When you begin at this job, they do a good job of welcoming you to the agency. *I/we received a surprise care package near the beginning of the pandemic, which was a nice treat. *Also due to the pandemic, early on we starting receiving a significant mileage stipend due to not having to go out as much to see clients in person, as well as an increased cell phone reimbursement. *This may be a good job for those starting out in the field to get experience and to find out if you like working with people. Just know, not every agency is as rigid as this one.

Cons

*They will say often "let me know if there's anything I can do to help," but then when you ask for help, they don’t always follow through the way you may expect them to. *There is a severe lack of work/life balance. They will literally work you into the ground, until you are bleeding, crawling on the ground and cannot do anymore. If you still want to up work here, I suggest you maintain serious time boundaries. I felt like I was a hamster on a wheel, and it was difficult to even take a proper sick day, weekend, or evening due to the amount of work. It was a constant decision between sleep, self-care, or work. Work way too often won out. The days are usually longer than a typical work day and it is difficult to take a proper break. *There is excessive and repetitive documentation. Much of it is incredibly intrusive for the young adult, and they won't necessarily want to answer it, which will make your job tough trying to get required answers. *There are deadlines ALL-THE-TIME. Because of that, they start to lose their effectiveness, and you learn what you actually need to have in by the deadline in order to survive (monthlies, psychosocials, notes). *If you don't have some things in by the deadline, it will significantly impact your "score card." This is calculated every month, and if it's too low you may be put on a performance improvement plan. It can happen to the best of us, because there is just too much to do. *Between the excessive documentation, deadlines, scorecard, time spent driving to young adults, and trying to chase down young adults, there is way too much pressure. It will get to you, just like it did to everyone else in my team when I started. Aside from the supervisor, everyone else on the team that I started with had left before I did. *There is absolutely excessive documentation and safety planning. Many of the young adults in LifeSet have been in the system and they do not want to go into depth about their history, ESPECIALLY at the very beginning. So you will sometimes be forced to either forfeit rapport-building to try to get documentation in on Youth Villages' aggressive timeline, or you will forfeit meeting the agency's expectations/a better score on your scorecard to try to build and maintain rapport with the clients (who are supposed to be why you're doing the job in the first place). *There’s a sense of favoritism or non-favoritism from supervisors above you. *This place runs on documentation and numbers. If that is not what you want to be doing, run far away from this job. *Don’t be surprised if your experience, education, and clinical judgment isn’t respected. They have a very rigid way of doing things, and despite having a great deal of knowledge and experience on your own, you will constantly be told how to work with your young adults. The suggestions from consultation will feel forced on you, and in turn, forced on the young adult as well. There is a lot of micromanaging from consultants who never even meet the young adults, and supervisors who do not have masters degrees and/or mental health licenses. *Earlier this year there were emails circulating around about unionizing. It would appear that people are clearly not happy at their jobs and were trying to change their situation. *A lot of the messages from the company responding to the negative reviews include one of these quotes: “We understand our line of work may require extra time, particularly if a child or family is in crisis. The work required at times can be demanding, but hopefully fulfilling and beneficial to all involved.” or “At Youth Villages, children’s needs come first but we also believe in being committed to our staff’s success and support.” I'm not sure what the turnaround rate is, but I'm incredibly curious what it is. They will continue losing worthwhile, very valuable, hard-working staff if they continue to ignore the mental health of staff and the pressure they add to it by creating impossible timelines and excessive amounts of documentation. *In terms of Covid-19, they required that we asked screening questions to our young adults before seeing them, but Youth Villages didn’t seem to really care about the answers and will still want you to go see them face-to-face if symptoms are not clearly covid-19 related. I even had to go see a client in person (outside, and briefly) while she said she was in quarantine. This was a very uncomfortable situation.

Pros

Helping kids and their families and you get good health insurance.

Cons

Company doesn’t care about your well being. Company focuses on quantity over quality of work. If you work here you will be taken advantage of. I’ve spent almost the past two years here and have seen almost everyone leave. There are so many things that make this place a place you don’t want to work; no work life balance, always increasing caseload (when I was hired I was told 4 cases was maximum and now the normal is 5-6 cases), youth villages prides itself on providing in home services to youth and families however the current expectation is that of the required 3 sessions a week per client only one session needs to be in person thus making it possible to carry extra cases…, however if a family is at high risk or requests in person you are expected to do all sessions in person (intercept program is level D = so all cases are technically high risk), so basically you end up working at least 50 hours a week and not to mention the paperwork, some cases are super heavy with case management which is difficult to constantly stay on top of when you’re having to drive all the way from Hillsboro, Gresham, lake Oswego, Milwaukee, north Portland, St. Helens, rhodendrun, sandy, se Portland, Ne Portland, sw Portland, nw Portland, forest grove, Estacada, etc, basically they tell you that that your cases will be around where you live so your driving isn’t terrible and sadly that’s never the case. Taking vacation is also difficult because your team is expected to carry your caseload and that’s tough because you know they are also working overtime and are exhausted. The mileage pay is trash. You are also expected to have full coverage car insurance even though we don’t ever drive clients. You will be expected to work when asked and cover on call weekends if people bail or leave because they are over working there. If you’re trying to get experience in the social work field, go work somewhere else, this place is headed in a very bad direction and it’s so hard to support your families if your company doesn’t support you as an employee as well as sincerely care about each and every family that they work with. I would say that the hardest past about the job is standing up for the families, advocating for their needs and then being shut down by youth villages and not receiving any support. Don’t waste your time, take your skills elsewhere and do the same job but be supported by your employer and respected by your employer because from my experience you won’t get that at youth villages (maybe in the beginning but it doesn’t last). Lastly, being on call isn’t always great because if there is a crisis and you need to check in with the on call supervisor there’s a solid chance they won’t pick up - this has happened many times.

Pros

I cannot think of one. This place is beyond toxic. It was heartbreaking that these kids have to be put in dangerous situations and they were placed with children who should be in the highest level of care.

Cons

RUN! Here is what important to Youth Villages: billing Medicaid through frivolous paperwork. They will preach self-care and expect you to work 24/7. Don't ever suggest that a child is not in the right level of care there, you will just be screamed at by management. They frequently take children who have serious behavioral issues that are dangerous and put them in inappropriate settings including one who broke out and brought guns back to campus and thankfully admitted it to the police. RUN.

Pros

Youth Villages is truly an innovator in their field. It provides the opportunity to truly give back to your community and improve the lives of children and families. They invest in their employees and provide a lot of room for growth and advancement.

Cons

Work life balance is hard because many direct line staff positions are on call 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. They did rotate weekend on call. As a supervisor, I was on call 24/7 and often responded both by phone and in person. If you’re not part of a TN office, it’s easy to feel forgotten.

Pros

Great peers that work for the company, very positive. A real hands on supervisor that was always available and very reliable. A great person to work for and very interested in my professional development. A monthly stipend for using your personal phone as your business phone.

Cons

Overtime hours over the 40 hour week were expected with no additional pay. Pay was low considering the degree required for the position. A lot of driving with the mileage pay being lower than the IRS recommended pay per mile. Maximum case load gained in a very short period after starting with Youth Villages.

Pros

If you are looking for a job right out of college, this would be good to do for one year. Nothing more. Do not work here if you are a seasoned professional.

Cons

Toxic Leadership: Youth Villages hires “yes” men/women for leadership- people who don’t ask questions and are eager to please. If you ask questions, they will call you a bully to your face and ask you to stop wanting to understand & instead, to do what is asked of you (hilarious!!). Even at the highest leadership levels, they are not allowed to be deeply curious people who ask questions. If you are someone who has a rapacious desire to understand and learn, this is not the place for you. They are threatened by intelligent people. If you can’t be controlled, they don’t want you to stick around. Notice the Youth Villages replies on this page — they are generic & condescending (“we make sure candidates know the demands of the job” in response to a person who listed a lack of response from anyone above them for their safety or after being assaulted). Youth Villages calls abused children & dysfunctional families “customers.” Semantics matters. Please stop calling them customers. The insurance provider is the customer. Youth Villages (Nashville) needs a full turnover of leadership — they will not be able to retain their best people until they get rid of the prideful & insecure leaders who quiver at questions.