Pros
Spending time with clients, going on outings such as surfing and hiking.
Cons
Very minimal clinical experience apart from helping de-escalate an occasional emotional crisis or consoling clients who are feeling down. Company claims that clients will have personal trainers, private gym, computer lab, 5 star cuisine, none of which is actually true so you will have to frequently deal with complaints from clients and their parents. Clients are given several HOURS of "therapeutic work time" and "free time" which consists of 2-6 hours of the clients either journaling, working on worksheets their therapist assigned, or finding some way to occupy their time, mainly through crafts making (friendship bracelets, collages, drawing). There is 1 therapeutic group weekday mornings which is called "process group", typically unstructured and clients go around in a circle talking about how they feel. There are 1 or 2 other artistic groups a couple days out of the week (movement therapy, sound bath), but the majority of the time is "work time" or "free time" which consists of sitting around and the clients complaining of extreme boredom. When this is brought up to management, the response is "what they do with their free time is up to them. If they're bored, it's their fault", or they look at clinical assistants and say, "figure something out. Play a game with them." Mamagement appears burnt out and checked out, complaints and concerns in regards to client treatment is met with zero action, or promises of actions that never get fulfilled and are eventually forgotten. The job is very reminiscent of a summer camp counselor, except it is supposed to be a mental health treatment center. The job revolves around watching the clients AT ALL TIMES, including sitting behind their bedroom doors as they shower, sitting behind their bedroom doors as they sleep, and sitting and watching them while they journal. In fact, if you decide to read a book or use your laptop to do homework while the clients are doing nothing but sitting and journaling, management informs you that you aren't watching them enough! The program is highly unstructured and staff is given no prompts aside from "do whatever you want, as long as it's safe". So if you're looking for little to no oversight and want to try your hand at running an entire program while management is off doing something else, this is the perfect program for you. If you enjoy being a sitter, this is a program for you. Most other clinical assistants do not have a mental health background and are hired to work closely with mental health patients. The entire system is questionable at best.