clinician

clinical supervisor

program manager

licensed practical nurse

mentor

Advocates

Working with the clients was the only rewarding and satisfying aspect of my position as a  Clinical Program Manager of a residential treatment facility.    However, due to the plethora of redundant , unnecessary paperwork and the other mundane responsibilities (cleaning toilets,etc,) it was difficult to spend as much time with the clients as I wanted and as they deserved.  The company philosophy of respect and open communication and supposed commitment to human rights looked great on paper.  It was too bad that they did not abide by them.  I saw many instances where a client's rights were violated because of untrained and unsupported clinicians/staff, poorly manged budgets, for staff convenience and other outrageous reasons. None of this human rights doctrine was applied to employees either.  All of the programs were understaffed and it created much distress and potentially unsafe situations for both clients and staff.  The staff members were not valued or respected.  Frequently,  job hours and locations that were agreed upon at hire were suddenly changed without any discussion or regard for the feelings or preferences of staff.  Staff were frequently berated for making mistakes in areas where they had received little or no training. The salary was very low and there were no cost of living increases!  Advocates did not adhere to Fair Labor Standards and staff that not meet the criteria for Exempt status were categorized as Exempt so that Advocates did not have to pay them overtime or for all hours worked.  The culture was one of fear.  It was very hierarchical and there were layers upon layers of management that did not function well together, or support the direct care workers in any way. As a new hire, I went for six months without any operational or clinical support/supervision and was left completely alone to run a residential program that served ten adults.  I observed OSHA violations at multiple locations. The  final insult was that I was threatened by upper level management and found myself in an incredibly hostile environment.  The worst part was the way my departure was handled.  I was unable to appropriately terminate with clients or staff.  This I am sure was detrimental to the recovery of many of the people I worked with for almost two years.  If you are thinking of working for Advocates, Inc. I would suggest that you think again and then turn around and run!

This is by far the WORST company I have ever worked for.  They do not appreciate their employees or their clients. For employees, the pay is terrible (no raises... ever!) with no opportunities for raises or advancements. They love their chain of command, and if you are on the bottom of that chain, you get no respect, no matter what you do or say or how hard you work. For clients, their needs come second to the budget. It ALL comes down to money. As long as the budget is in the black (which is extremely rare), no one cares at what cost it comes to the clients. They will inappropriately place clients in houses that can't give them the services they really need if it will get the company more money. They cut/don't fill essential positions in order to save money. Then there are the people in the higher up positions. They are unprofessional and just plain bullies. They are sneaky and go behind your back to cause you grief. I am still in shock over how some of my coworkers were treated. I have heard higher ups straight up lying about lower level employees in order to push them out. They push people out A LOT... they have no real basis for firing people they don't like, so instead they give them more work and pressure and responsibilities than any one person should have and are just flat out nasty, rude, and mean to them until they crack under the pressure and quit. If they want you out, good luck, because they will make your time with the company miserable. If they're trying to push you out, you will get minimal supervision and will be made to feel like an idiot when you make a mistake that wouldn't have been made had you been supervised on a regular basis! Their human rights policy only applies to certain people... everyone else is treated like total garbage. Employees are a dime a dozen to them. Advocates has made me rethink working for nonprofits and in the mental health field in general. Don't build a career here. If you truly care about helping people, do it with another company.

I understand that experience can be good training, but I would have loved to at least know what/who I would be working with. There was also very poor management, especially during Covid. The manager was able to stay home most of the time, while my team had to risk their lives in person, with strangers who would come into the facility and not have the best hygiene. The company is all about advocacy for mental health, but it takes their client's mental health into consideration WAY more than the employees. They simply do not care about the employees, we just had to do our work, and make everyone else satisfied. I expressed my concerns about being in person with Covid going on, and strangers and the homeless; all they would say is that I need to keep myself safe by cleaning and washing my hands. The frustrating part was that the work I was doing could have EASILY been done remotely! We had an amazing online video peer group system in place! Clients loved it, and it kept everyone safe! But they made us come back. And even when we were back we had to run both the in-person visits as well as the online meetings, and usually, it was only one or two of us working at a time. It was very hard to manage, and there was absolutely no help. They have a very high turnover rate, and I completely understand why now. 
It seemed like an amazing place to work at first, and maybe it was before Covid, but they just did not manage it well, and it made it very hard to work. 

Very stressful work and low pay to compensate for it. A typical day may include anything from helping someone through a psychiatric crisis, cleaning a toilet, managing staff, or completing a large amount of paperwork. If you like having busy days where multitasking is a MUST, then this would be a good fit. Environments are high energy, and what Advocates can squeeze out of you, they will. If you get a good supervisor, the work is still stressful, but you will feel supported throughout. Not all supervisors treat people the same though, and there is zero systematic unity throughout the agency. Get ready to learn how to do something at least 5 different ways as told to you by 5 different supervisors. Workplace culture is actually very friendly and somewhat relaxed. Time off is amazing, and taking mental health days is very much encouraged. Hardest part of the job is the unpredictability, lack of good training (you get thrown right in), and no systems in place. While Advocates is such a huge agency, you can actually feel very isolated since each program operates completely separate from the others. This would include budgets, staff, work load, client cases...etc. The most enjoyable part of the job is working with knowledgeable professionals in the field, and meeting the wonderful clients supported by advocates.

mandating staff to stay extra 8+ hours often,  over worked under paid. mandatory meetings often, staff told less then 24 hours notice in advance.  nothing happens to fix issues brought up at meetings.

company doesn't seem to care about individuals nor workers. lacks respect for individuals as well as staff,   management bully staff.  Lots of promises without any follow thru. Unsafe working conditions for individuals as well as workers and complaints are minimized. Excessive paperwork especially with pay rates as they are. Bad Management, pay so low can not afford competent workers. a lot of racial problems that made it uncomfortable to work there and when ask for help from upper management they were unable or unwilling to help .Management is lost and on a downward spiral. They don't practice the "Advocates Way" with staff members.

Some clients can be violent and sometimes assault staff or other clients, when need assistance management ignore / pretend it never happened/ when client is in obvious mental downward spiral it gets ignored for weeks even when staff bring it to attention to management.. will not let workers take time off and make staff get half  pay when need to cash out
Do not recommend, worked full time for over 21 months

human rights workers and individuals 
mandatory meetings staff told less then 24 hours notice in advance often

If you would have asked me to review my time at Advocates 2 years ago, I would have mostly great things to say. The only short-coming would have been the pay (it's a human services non-profit so that's to be expected).

However my attitude is completely different because now I realize that this company treats you well while they exploit you for your labor but will leave you out to dry if you ever decide to leave or if you have to leave for whatever circumstance. Because they make it much harder for you to get hired somewhere else due to their "no personal reference" policy.

That's right. If you leave the company or get laid off and later would like to get a reference from a manager who still is with Advocates, that is against policy and your manager can deny you whether they want to give the reference or not. My advice to anyone trying to do this is to just ask anyway because maybe your manager isn't aware of the rule or maybe they don't care.  

But on paper and officially, all this company will offer you after you've left is a verification of dates of employment. It's honestly crazy that this is even legal. And I wouldnt be surprised if some labor law weren't being broken with this policy. 

Let me start by saying I gained valuable experience working with a wide variety of clients as a clinician here. Unfortunately this place only cares about money at the expense of their employees and clients. 

As a clinician you are forced to see every person that walks in your door due to unrealistic productivity and drowning paperwork. You worry about lack of fit for clients? Too bad because everyone else is in the same boat and they need the money from the insurance for that client.

Managememt is a joke because they have drank the kool aide or for the few decent ones, they are also drowning in their responsibilities. 

You are only paid when you see a client but yet are expected to attend weekly meetings and supervision for free. Wtf?! Once I completed my hours and got my license I ran and never looked back. 

My supervisor tried to bully me into staying by saying I wouldn't make it on my own that I wasn't ready for Private Practice. Somehow I'm not ready to work with less paperwork and higher functioning clients but I'm ready to work for them with psychotic clients? Go figure. Thankfully I recognized the abusive situation from a mile away and left anyway. Please proceed with caution or just avoid at all costs.

I worked at this company for 3 years. In that time I did learn a lot of valuable skills and gained experience. However, the management, HR dept and training were all awful and ruined my experience here. You do not get recognized for the hard work you do and you do not get paid nearly enough to deal with the issues and amount of paper work that they require of you. Any recognition for hard work and a job well done goes to your supervisors, who make way more money, do less work, and in my experience, care much less about the work being done. Directors get paid very large salaries while those who do the most challenging parts of the job are paid minimally. You are treated as a variable and not a constant. So, if you want to work hard and have your managers reap the rewards, work here. You are reprimanded when you ask for raises. The training is a joke compared to the actual work required. And when something goes wrong, all of the blame goes on you even though you have expressed concern about your training. Advocates is also one of the lowest paying in the state for these types of jobs. Go anywhere else. Work the same job for a different company, get paid better and treated better.

The day at work on my shift which is Overnight is: Get Report from the previous shift, Makes sure the people we serve (Clients) are in their rooms safely during the night, empowering them what they can do and assisting them with what they cannot do: Teaching, Coaching, Encouraging, Active listening & understanding them, administering Medications,Calling supervisor and Emergency support when there is a need, gives shift report to the next shift, etc.
We also work as a team workers, wthout hesitate to help one another
My hardest experience are Mental Health Clients and it makes it more challenging to redirect them to the right path
And the most enjoyable part is when I/we am/are able to coach someone to do the right thing, for example alcohol, to assist client to go through AA Meetings to try to stop drinking alcohol and able to aquire a job and be reponsible for his or herself. To assist Client to go through Angry Management, passed able to mingle with groups, workplace etc.

Talk about feeling excluded.  I'm sure there are some amazing components of Advocates, and some amazing, skilled, managers that go above and beyond to meet the program expectations, goal, and care about their staff and clients alike. What I was privy to however and unfortunately was individuals being set up to fail, shoddy communication (or none at all), unethical sabotaging of another s work and even the "stealing"  of another's work after this person had left the agency, but taking credit for it. Crazy meetings in which individuals get slandered, berated and ambushed- leaving them bewildered afterwards. Yes, this is how some parts of Advocates operates. Staff that don't talk to each other ( they are afraid to), management that rolls in at odd hours of the day (with a mood that is as unpredictable as the weather) - and rolls out the same way.  Direct service of clients? Not Sir how that works... I think I can count on both hands the number.I witnessed while I was there. For a program dependant on numbers.... Just saying.
I guess that's easy when you have a puppet.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Clinician 81 salaries reported	$69,824 per year
Clinical supervisor 21 salaries reported	$75,166 per year
Program manager 17 salaries reported	$51,811 per year
Licensed practical nurse 14 salaries reported	$33.96 per hour
Mentor 13 salaries reported	$17.41 per hour

Working at Advocates: Company Overview and Reviews

Advocates

Advocates Ratings

Popular jobs at Advocates

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected