Pros
I enjoy helping people and to do this and help families and clients is very rewarding. It is recommended you are a friendly and positive person who actually has an interest in helping people heal and remove negative behaviors from their lives. I have worked manual labor blue collar jobs all my life before this in low level service industries, and the majority of the people I found there were very negative and miserable. To go from jobs like that, to a white collar job like this utilizing my human services degree was a major improvement, both in quality and in pay. I make $16 an hour, soon to be $17 after 6 months as a TSS in Lancaster, and it is a great entry level job to gain experience before either becoming a BSC after attaining the necessary credentials, or to move into a full time similar job that requires experience in the field. Another great perk is that regularly I've found myself in the community watching plays, even visited horses at a local farm with the client and his siblings and was surrounded by beauty that day. Of course doing my job and monitoring his behavior, but getting paid to do great things like this is such a massive improvement from fronting shelves at a local grocery store for 8 hours bored out of my mind, or getting yelled at in a 100 degree kitchen at Applebee's surrounded by miserable and negative people who seem like they're ready to snap at any moment and go off the handle. To me, a college education and a white collar job helping people, like this one, is so worth it.
Cons
The hours are unstable. It is part time, and sometimes the clients have to cancel for one reason or another, but for me, the majority of my assigned hours have been fulfilled so far. The clients are obviously problematic, that's why we're there as a TSS etc. So one needs a lot of patience to deal with clients that are antagonistic, and often do not respect personal boundaries and exert force in the form of physical or verbal aggression often. The families really want help assuaging this problem, or they wouldn't have gone through so much trouble contacting agencies and doing paperwork etc. My experience with them is that they're often very frustrated, tired of dealing with the behavior, and sometimes can be at their wit's end. Compassion and patience is a prerequisite for this job, along with a desire to do your best and help with all the tools at your disposal. Also you have to go through a good amount of training, online and offline i.e. CPR training every few years I think, along with others that are annual or every 5 years. But to me, the training is worth it.
