direct support professional

residence manager

teacher's aide

teaching assistant

assistant

Birch Family Services

Working as a TA here is a very stressful job. Especially during the COVID 19 pandemic. You work with a lot of preschoolers who have special needs and behavior problems, which makes your work environment stressful and chaotic most days. Supervisors will pull TAs from one classroom to another one on random days to make up for someone not being there. Management will go outside of class ratio rules and overbook students in your class. They will not successfully provide you with the support you need such as an extra TA for a class with many students who have behavior problems. Things are not always predictable and your planned day can change as soon as you walk in the building. The kids in your class make or break you. Most of the students will yell, scream, cry, act out for no reason at all and you are given the responsibility to manage and deal with them. TAs are not treated fairly well here and more like just bodies. Everyone is prone to burnout. There is also gossiping in the workplace. Everyone talks about people behind their backs.. There is not enough communication with the parents either. During the pandemic, parents would not log on to Microsoft Teams with their children. The parents purposely "skip" school than providing their child an education. As a result, there's no consistency with managing their children's education and behaviors. Pay is not worth all of this

The management at Birch is good and the staff is very welcoming of new recruits.  The priority at this school is the kids and the teachers in conjunction with the teacher assistants and other staff work very hard in order to improve the quality of the kids' education.  The teachers and teacher assistants I worked with were patient and willing to explain how to perform the tasks efficiently for the benefit and more importantly, the safety of the children.  

I learned quite a lot of things from this work experience.  Working with children aged 3-5, I learned to have patience.  I also learned teamwork - working effectively in accordance with the teacher - as it is one of the most important things.  Another thing is I learned is timing which is significant anywhere.  By timing, I mean when to positively reinforce a child's behavior as opposed to when to discipline the child in order to improve the cognitive and social behavior of the child.  This was the hardest part of the job because the timing was different for each and every child and it was a challenge to apply it effectively.  

The most enjoyable part of the job was seeing the children happy as that brought a smile to my face.  The playground time was especially enjoyable and educational because I could see the children in their natural element and their true self was revealed.

If you already have experience taking care of kids in a group setting and have knowledge and experience with kids with autism, it should be fine. But if you have 0 childcare experience then you will essentially just copy what you see from the certified teaching assistants and teachers, and you may not know if it is always the correct approach. I do think the staff all care about the kids but it also felt like the official trainings were not actually things the upper management checked on in the classrooms, kind of like they train you with their official materials and then you see something completely different. I think the issue is with principals and upper management. Maybe the rest of the staff didn’t always use autism-informed approaches, but if the training is not adequate nor the prior expectations of experience made clear, there’s not much they can do but do their best with the kids every day because the kids still have to function within a certain school system that will evaluate them based on their ability to do certain things. So I think the supervision/training is certainly a problem, but that responsibility lies with those who aren’t actually in the classrooms with the kids every day all day.

Birch Family Services has helped me gain confidence in speaking to  parents, staff and children alike  The two greatest things about this job are definitely the majority of the staff, and of course the children.  The hustle and bustle doesn't stop until the last bus has left to drive the children home, but it's a good type of busy.  The therapists, for the most part, work hand in hand with the teachers and teachers assistants; they truly have the children's best interests at heart.  Unfortunately, the hardest part of the job is the management, or lack there of.  When dealing with delicate situations such as the parents of intellectually disabled, emotionally disturbed and/or autistic children, the most important thing to have are supervisors that support you.   However, most often then not, these supervisors usually are afraid to speak up for their staff or simply do not care enough to vouch for them.  What kept me here for so long, was watching many a child who might not have been able to talk in September, be able to greet me hello when they graduated come June.

Management is awful here as well as job security. Working with individuals is rewarding but there is nothing else about the position that is so. Upper management care only about business and do not value the employees. They do not go out of their way to learn the ins and outs of programs and only involve themselves when numbers aren't being met. They are also so uninvolved that expectations are high and incredibly unreasonable. High case load, limited time. Very obvious, heavy favoritism within direct management which is discouraging to other staff working just as hard. Direct management is not involved enough to be able to hold staff accountable for anything. Many people have retired or quit over the last year. Stay away.

Birch has been through a tremendous amount of change over the past year.  Change is good but not so frequent. They lost  a lot of valuable employees. It seems like every six months there's a change in upper management. There is no job security.   Management is awful. No one knows what they are doing. Everyone is always on edge at the administrative office wondering when will they get pulled in the office to be told their services are no longer needed. It's unfortunate because I'm actually fond on their mission and supports they provide to individuals with intellectually disabilities, but they have a lot of work to do. Management plays favoritism and you are evaluated on how others view you. They do not have policies in place to run their programs. Awful place to work!

the management is rude, dumb, and incompetent the majority of the staff is morons.they have computer programs that don't work, then they blame you for not being able to complete the tasks. the so called supervisorso are butt licking informants who lie like the devil, this field is emotionally and physically dangerous  and if the individuals have a mark on them from someone else you and the whole shift gets investigated for abuse and devilish Co worker's use that as a revenge tactic to make falso reports that can affect you for the rest of your life so beware of this field it's not  worth it go do anything thing else but this if you want a shot at a decent career

I did not have a pleasant experience working as a BIS. There was poor training. Some of the BIS related paperwork in the residence was done unethically. The supervisor and even the people who work in the main office are hugely ego driven are miserable and unhappy. You can sense and feel the disingenuous energies. People in this company claim to care about helping others but instead they are concerned about saving money. They don't pair some of the people supported with the proper level of supervision and theres poor oversight of previous BIS paperwork and documentation. It was a lesson in working here and will never work for this company in any capacity again. 

A typical day a work is helping the consumers out with their daily living skills and working on their goals. I learned a lot over the few years I been at Birch such as approaching things in a better matter, having patience, values, culture etc. I have the best manager in the world she keeps everything running smoothly. My co-workers are kind good people, loving, caring and responsible. The hardest part of the job is when a consumer shows  a bad behavior but besides that its great because I am always able to redirect them. The most exciting part of the job is seeing the guys smile, when their happy, when they reach and succeed certain goals.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Caring for the individuals who are in need with physical and mental illness 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Managing my time otherwise making my work done on time

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
It's the experience that people have from the company the share value behavior attitude that make up the company

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Check up and see over the team and any issues individuals may have and help them

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Direct support professional 348 salaries reported	$20.50 per hour
Residence manager 22 salaries reported	$67,653 per year
Teacher's aide 16 salaries reported	$18.73 per hour
Teaching assistant 13 salaries reported	$19.91 per hour
Assistant 7 salaries reported	$18.69 per hour

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