residential aide

behavioral specialist

certified medical assistant

mentor

counselor

CODA, Inc.

Low pay for all ADST (alcohol and drug service tech) is required to do. A mix of weekend 12 hour shifts, and weekday 8 or 5 hour shifts. High staff turnover and perpetually understaffed. There is very little actual training, and is chronically new people training new people with inconsistent information. ADST is lowest paid position but does the most, including cleaning. ADST interacts most with patients in day to day and observes continual behaviors that counselors don't see or followup with staff on. Communication between ADST and clinical staff/mngmt about patient behavior is through brief shift notes and emails and difficult to actually convey. Management also prioritizes patient complaints over staff concerns without consulting staff for accurate context of repeated behavior. Counseling team is severely understaffed. Patients often miss out on activities because counseling team doesn't properly submit paperwork. There is no custodial team at Gresham facility so that falls on patients and ADST,  and because they are busy and understaffed, it is always a dirty facility that never gets fully cleaned/sanitized including after COVID outbreaks. There is no staff break room to have a peaceful break or meal on site, and often ADST isn't able to take all breaks due to staff shortages. AC barely works in the building on hot days. There's a lot of gossip, cliquey-ness and immaturity among staff and management with little intervention to address or truly change. Patients have dubbed this CODA facility the "hand-me-down" location because it is run so poorly and seemingly gets the bare minimum. The patient food is pretty terrible and is subsidized by patient food stamps and they don't always have enough food to serve for 30+ male patients. Staff that is assumed not to have prior personal addiction history are defined by both patients and other staff as "normies" and are treated differently regardless of work ethic, knowledge and actual history. This is in general a fairly toxic work environment between staff and patients.

CODA fulfills a niche in the metropolitan area for inexpensive, widely accessible alcohol and drug treatment.

It pays terribly (most full-time employees qualify for food stamps), benefits are limited, and management appears to genuinely believe that they are guiding this non-profit company into a golden age. They also appear to be doing this incompetently, as evidenced by an ever-decreasing accessibility to services and availability of services.

Employees at my facility are regularly told that they would not be hireable anywhere else and that they are not useful or qualified to make decisions or advance within the company. The environment is high-stress, and at the time that I am writing this review, nervous breakdowns among staff are a regular occurrence at this and all other sites.

Management enforces a bottom-up chain of command, going so far as to inform clinicians at staff meetings that they are not to contact higher-ups within the company, while not observing the top-down portion of this same rule. E-mail use and internet use is monitored, productivity standards are enforced but without compensation, and paychecks are given out once per month.

Completed outreach work with individuals who were justice involved. Started off by training in their intake department, completing assessments with folks who were new to CODA. This I enjoyed, though it was fairly fast paced. Lots of details after the initial assessment was completed that unfortunately got lost along the way. But, ultimately I enjoyed this job and it was good knowing  you were helping others. After an unusually lengthy training period, I went on to do outreach work at the jails. There I had lots of freedom, decent (though not great) pay and the ability to really do a range of tasks as a social worker each day. Anything from assessing an individual at the jail, attending a meeting with probation officers or driving a client from residential treatment to get labs taken to determine medication eligibility. Unfortunately the position was new and I did not get the supervision I'd hoped for. Regardless, compared to my current job, this job was a fantastic "starting out" position. Ultimately left to pursue position working in inpatient mental health setting and miss it quite a lot! A select few humorous co-workers also made this job worth while.

This used to be a great place to work, had great supportive culture, and provided effective patient care. I was lucky enough to have had the most wonderful boss (who eventually left due to feeling undervalued, overworked, and distrusted at the end for trying to help), and was there during times when CODA was great, but 2021 has really been a bad year for CODA is so many ways. Current job security there is great because so many people have left. The pay is really low for the requirements and experience they want from employees. Management (director level) is too focused on the overall big picture of treatment modality and being progressive, but severely neglects employees, and doesn't communicate effectively with each other, creating toxic inter-departmental relations. New upper leadership cares less and less for employees as they continue to turn-over. Extremely difficult work, so having a good manager who cares about how you're *doing*, rather than micromanaging, is super important. They need to figure out how to pay their employees more if they want to survive.

Days typically began by checking messages and communicating with outside resources for clients. This time also included planning for group therapy and individual sessions.

Most days, I met with clients both one to one and in group therapy. I coordinated with outside agencies, including DHS, to develop effective treatment plans.

At this job, I gained significant experience working with clients with limited resources. I was often in communication with insurance companies. I also learned about collaboration with co-workers in order to provide maximum advocacy for the clients. 

The most difficult aspect of the job was seeing clients relapse on drugs and alcohol. It could be disheartening to encounter client relapse and the shame and guilt displayed by these clients. Learning to guide these clients through the process was challenging.

The most enjoyable part of the job was watching clients complete the program and develop their own plans for sobriety after treatment. This success would not have been possible without the team collaboration of the company and the motivation of the clients.

What is the best part of working at the company?
That you get to go home at the end of the day

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Almost every aspect every 30 minutes supervisors are doing constant assessments to see where you are at with your workload. Very stressful constantly being pushed pushed pushed too big of a load very overwhelming and stressful.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
If one does not like you within a week, they all will find a reason to not like you either you are in the clique and everything is great or you’re not, and everybody will give the cold shoulder or be completely fake to your face a lot of whispering, and behind the back talk in the workplace

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Being pushed pushed pushed by the higher ups, being disrespected and pushed by the clients rarely get to take a break and when you do you feel guilty and God for bid you are two minutes late coming back from lunch constant stress, stress, stress

The one star is for the amazing employees I worked with.There are a lot of amazing employees at CODA but upper management could care less about their actual work, dedication, ideas, etc. They are in the clouds without regard for any of their employees. Employees are simply a number. High turnover due to a High School drama/backstabbing/tattling atmosphere in addition to no raises, no recognition for work done, and absolutely no regard for incentivizing employees to stay and better themselves. Proposals of great value and necessity go to upper management and die. Any ideas to progress any area of CODA are disregarded unless it's theirs. They have no idea the actual ground floor work that's done so how can they possibly have these ideas? Upper management will lie to your face if it means bettering themselves and will throw anyone under the bus to do the same. This trickles down within the staff and thus anyone who isn't this way doesn't make it there.Terrible place to work I wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole.

I learned a lot working at CODA, and the people working there are fantastic, however it stops at a managerial level. The turn over rate is just way too high and management takes pretty shameless advantage of the employees who remain to fill gaps for weeks, or months, while they struggle to get new hires. Management DOES NOT TRAIN new hires after NEO; actual job training is almost always done by fellow employees, or if you're lucky, a team lead. These are people who sometimes have barely settled into the position enough themselves to know what they're doing, which is not made any easier by the fact that almost all training policies are out of date and the information on how to correctly do a job is held inside long term employees' heads. As more of their experienced staff leaves they take more information on how CODA actually runs with them, leaving management who don't know how to do the jobs of the people under them to train new hires. It's a mess. 

Outpatient Clinic - Portland
I found this work setting to be enjoyable, engaging, and driven by good employees with strong knowledge and skill sets.  The day to day work is both rapid and eclectic (running groups, counseling sessions, treatment meetings, crises, documentation, etc).  This a good place to experience contemporary A&D treatment if you are able to handle the pace.
Nevertheless, this setting struggles with inconsistency and lack of resources.  A lot of great people work here, but many leave quickly, primarily due to low wages. The organization's inability to compensate workers  at times results in chaotic and disorganized patient care.
Working at this clinic will provide plenty of opportunities to enhance clinical skills and knowledge, but expectations regarding compensation, quality of life, and career development should be kept to a minimum.

The staff is very 'catty' and can't stop talking about other staff and clients behind their backs. Even management shares information about their other employees to employees in the same job to poke fun at "how dumb" they are. Management and HR could care less about the harassment employees face from other employees. Stay away from the Happy Valley (Clackamas) clinic.  

The turnover rate is high. Counselors have case loads of 60-100 patients and are not given extra help from CODA because they refuse to high more counselors. Clients get the short end of the stick because they have to wait 2-3 weeks to reschedule with their counselors. 

Pay is mediocre. Most employees here: administrative and counselors work two jobs to make ends meet.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Residential aide 36 salaries reported	$19.99 per hour
Behavioral specialist 15 salaries reported	$55,600 per year
Certified medical assistant 19 salaries reported	$24.16 per hour
Mentor 10 salaries reported	$24.85 per hour
Counselor 9 salaries reported	$23.30 per hour

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