Zero Stars - Avis employé Employé (anonyme) Step Forward Therapy

I feel that there are many areas of improvement and utter disregard that this company has to offer for the well-being and mental health of its therapists/staff. This list is just to name a few cons about working at this company: 1. They do not respect or even consider that therapists need a work-life balance. You will feel obligated to take your work home with you, check your email on the weekends or outside work hours, and complete notes, progress reports, or evaluations at home. In addition to this con, you will have to use your personal computer or iPad to complete all your documentation with no work computers or technology provided to you as an employee. 2. In addition to no work-life balance, as a therapist at SFT you will most likely have to work until 8 pm or later most nights (depending on how many notes you have to catch up on). If you attempt to advocate for an earlier end time to your day, you will be greeted with “These are the hours you signed up for;” with no regard that you will be spending approximately 10 hours of your day at the clinic but only getting paid for probably 6-7 of those hours. 3. There is no HR department. Period. The CEO does not have an upper management organization at all leaving employee concerns and complaints unaddressed and unsupported as all concerns are to be reported directly to her. The CEO overloads her plate and stretches herself WAY too thin; hence the unaddressed complaints and concerns. 4. The methods used by management and lead therapists to track productivity are a hot mess, to say the least, and no organization makes tracking hours a nightmare. You will use 3 different productivity tracking sources. Again a literal nightmare. 5. Piggybacking off of that the amount of that: the amount of billable hours you will get paid is not nearly the amount of hours you will spend at the clinic documenting, cleaning, making treatment materials, and more. And if you want to advocate for yourself to get paid for these additional non-billable hours, forget about it. Management will make you fill out miles of paperwork to justify why you are cleaning up after kids to prevent germs and other illnesses from spreading throughout the clinic. 6. The “Developmental Preschool.” This nightmare could be a thread in and of itself, but with the rest of the complaints, I won’t delve into too much detail. If at all costs, try to avoid being placed in preschool. It is the worst thing about this place. They can’t get a consistent preschool teacher to stay because of the pay and hours. There is never enough staff to support the behaviors of kids in the classroom. The bad thing about this unethical aspect of this place is the preschool is not going anywhere. Therapists constantly request more support from management but are not listened to. They will continuously say that certain kids don’t need a 1 to 1 support; however, they CLEARLY do due to the dangerous behaviors. The main takeaway from this review is this: the “Developmental Preschool” will burn you out, make you hate your job here, and you will feel like a glorified babysitter. You might even get called one because the staff basically received that "feedback" to our faces!` Their current preschool teacher (if she is still there) is wonderful and wants to try to make a lot of improvements. The thing that always ends up driving preschool teachers away is management not letting the teachers have the freedom to do what they want with their classroom and how things are run. When the teacher attempts to advocate for any changes (which are 99.9% positive and for the better) management and higher-ups will consistently put down their ideas with a “it’s my way or the highway” mentality. 7. Literally no benefits. Insurance benefits are painfully awful and there is no 401k offered. You are only allotted 10 days of PTO with no opportunities to accrue more than that. Don’t let management fool you when you ask about benefits. They will say they are “working on it” but it will never happen. 8. High turnover rate. Don’t let management fool you by saying they have a low turnover rate. There are only 2 clinicians that have been at the clinic for over 4 years. Therapists get burnt out so quickly here and are drained from the hours. Not to mention for the clients who have more aggressive behaviors, there is no safety training to help therapists protect themselves, the client, or others in the clinic. Some of these clients are not small kiddos and can put up a hard fight. If you do decide to work here after reading this incredibly transparent review then I suggest taking a CEU or something on how to safely protect yourself and others when children become aggressive. 9. They have no EMR system and the way documenting is approached is very unethical. If you want to see what I mean, then go for an interview or work there yourself. Management again says they are “working on it” with obtaining an EMR system, but I doubt that day will be anytime soon. The CEO is trying to run this business as cheaply as possible and it’s only running her into the ground. 10. Good luck trying to take PTO. There is no system in place for you to request PTO (you use a Google form) and there is no way for you to see how much PTO you have accrued. If you want to know how much PTO you have you have to either ask management in person or email management (good luck getting a response). 11. Scheduling will frequently move kids off your schedule and give them to someone else, add kids to your schedule, or make other scheduling changes and not communicate any of these with you. You must find the scheduler and follow up frequently regarding these changes. SOMETIMES you will get an answer.