Pros
You get to develop meaningful relationships with some clients and being a person that they can trust and rely on is an amazing thing. There are some outstanding employees. You can become a QMHP there. Having insurance is good, because you WILL need it. Depression, anxiety, and building apathy are inevitable and seen in most employees.
Cons
Literally everything else. They lie to you throughout orientation, so the shock of the actual job is jarring. The set up they have to handle aggression does not work. At all. Ukeru is a joke. Those two factors contribute heavily to the insanely low retention rate they have. Very little support is given to the residential staff. The pay is not even close to adequate or competitive. I’ve seen many many situations where it was shown how morally bankrupt the entire company is - people in charge putting clients and staff in situations that set everyone up for failure and trauma (including sexual assault). I have seen managers take a disliking towards their staff and go out of their way to make that staff so miserable that they will quit. Mandatory overtime is in place at the moment. Most of us work overtime anyway though, because without it our paychecks are what we could have made working a minimum wage job. Many of the higher ups are people best described as looking to increase revenue even when it comes to harming clients and staff. Empathy will come back to bite you because the higher ups will note that and use emotional manipulation against you. Time off is difficult to get, especially when you are new because it goes by seniority. Time off on holidays is near impossible. Your life turns into you being there constantly, for your shift and overtime. Because you will need the overtime pay to pay bills. You will be injured. Urine and feces are an intense problem in most locations. You will feel abused by management. I can count on both hands the people I’ve met in the last 5 years who aren’t consistently and actively looking for different employment. People can only handle being miserable for so long. The only reason most of us are still around is that on our little time off we are so exhausted from working a very difficult job constantly, that going to an interview or filling out applications is something we don’t have the energy/time for.