controller

case manager

senior manager talent partner

practice nurse

medical biller

Community Connections

Community Connections is an organization that prides itself on following their values. They provide valuable workshops weekly that were highly useful, as well as enjoyable.
A typical day in Supported Employment will bring working along side 2-3 other supported employment case managers in a small work space with no privacy. Although the working conditions are not ideal with no true privacy and space, it is a collaborative environment that proves to be somewhat valuable. As an employment specialist you will have a case load of about 20 consumers who you will see once a week. You will be responsible for intake appointments, producing employment plans, making cover letters and resumes, online job searches, as well as going out into the community to build partnerships and relationships. You will also be responsible for providing transportation for your consumer, whether it be transporting them to a job interview, to a clothing referral, or taking them out into the community to work on job development. Being familiar with DC, and having reliable transportation is a must. Be warned, Community Connections does not provided insurance for driving on company time. Woking in employment you will be highly discouraged from the supervisor to do any type of real counseling with your consumers, and encouraged to leave all un-employment matters to the case managers. The supervisor who is unlike any of the other case managers with Community Connections is rarely present, disregards emails or does not respond in a timely matter, and provides little to no support when needed. You will receive supervision for one hour once ever week if the supervisor can manage to make it into the office on time. The most difficult part of working with Community Connections is producing 6 hours of productivity daily, which is to be case noted within 24 hours. Case notes are to be detailed, and in many cases clinical, and can take up to an hour to write for a days worth of work. Note, the time you spend writing these notes does not count towards your productivity for the day, along with email responses and phone matters. Dropping below 80% productivity more than 3 time will result in getting fired. I would highly recommend working for Community Connections, but would encourage exploring other areas other than employment. If it wasn't for the unprofessional, unsympathetic, and out of touch supervisor, I would give supported employment a shinning review. Community Connection has many compassionate and dedicated employees as well as supervisors who love what they do and make it known on a daily basis.
Also, Community Connections works on a pay grade scale. If you have an undergraduate degree, expect to start at $33,000 a year. A Graduate degree will start you at 35,000 a year. These are non-negotiable!!! 

A typical day at work on an Assertive Community Treatment Team includes a team meeting to determine the client needs for the day and making assignments to each of the team members to ensure that all client needs are met. After the meeting, team members carry out the assignments, which include tasks such as: coordinating mental health treatment, coordinating medication management, facilitating psychiatry appointments, facilitating primary health care appointments, referring clients for resources, accompanying clients to obtain needed resources like food, emergency shelter, transitional housing, long-term housing, referring clients to addiction treatment programs and facilitating access to the programs, etc. Also, each team member must constantly monitor and assess for psychiatric emergencies, such as when a client is suicidal, homicidal, or unable to care for self due to degree of psychotic symptoms. When this occurs, the team must collaborate to create a crisis intervention plan and act as quickly as possible.

Community Connections is extremely team oriented, from management down to direct line staff. There is a desire for everyone to learn, to feel supported, and to grow professionally.

Co-workers are highly skilled social workers and counselors, and dedicated to the mission of the agency.

The hardest part of the job is keeping enough emotional distance from the clients.

The most enjoyable part of the job is building long-term relationships with clients and being able to see a direct impact of services on their lives.

Community Connections ACT teams attempt to provide holistic care for people with chronic, serious mental illness, many of whom are homeless and have addictions. They assert that they are providing connections between various service agencies in DC that are broken. In fact, they receive nearly all their funding through DC Medicaid, and closely resemble many of the other agencies in the way in which they operate. Nurses implement care for psychiatrists at the non-profit agency, within the clinic and in the field. They are supervised by social workers who have no medical or nursing background. Each ACT nurse is part of a team with about 8 case managers, and 100 consumers. The nurse provides care for all 100 consumers, and the case managers bring them in to the clinic to see the nurse and psychiatrist without appointments. The expectation is that the nurse will spend time in the field with clients, but time management is very difficult, and it is hard to get out of the clinic. During the day, there are usually dozens of consumers waiting for hours in the lobby area, sometimes in an agitated state. There is no defined means of advancement for nurses. Administrative tasks such as filling pill boxes and writing narrative notes for billing purposes take a great deal of the nurse's time, such that most of them spend about 9 or ten hours per day to complete 3 hours' of billable time. The agency has a strong focus upon completing sufficient billable hours to keep afloat financially, and puts pressure on all nurses and case managers to make quotas.

A typical day of a Act team case manager consist of picking up clients taking them to their doctor appointments, grocery shopping, to and from COmmunity Connections to see the psychiatrist, etc. You have to transport sometime dirty and bed bug infested clients places. So many of our clients had bedbugs this year and there was little/ no protection from the company for staff that transported these bedbugs home with them. Meaning you would have to pay out of pocket to get rid of bedbug infestation in your home. 
As a casemanager you are pushed to drive clients around Instead of encouraging clients to meet you at their appointments or teach the clients how to utilize public transportation to get around. This is doing a disservice to the client because they rely on the case mangers to get everywhere and do not have the skills or want to get around on their own, thus using case managers as a taxi service to get everywhere! Overall if you are passionate about genuinely helping individuals this is not the job for you!! You will be highly disappointed as you transport people around instead of teaching them to get around for productivity purposes.

A typical day at work for me was getting a verbal and written report of the clients. When the clients got up we had to make sure they took their medication and completed their chores. I had observed them with their medication was being taken. I also had to make sure they were properly dressed for the weather.There was a treatment plan done amongst the staff and doctors once a month. Some things I liked about working for this company was that we worked at our own pace, and the benefits were great they offered the dental, vision,health, and flex plan along with the 401k. I disliked that there  was that there was no room for advancement and it was a hassle getting the clients to agree on what food to eat. There was times when I had to sure it was no drugs or alcohol on the premises. I learned that no two people are alike and to that take charge of a group of people to keep them in a safe and calm environment.

The most important part of the day was the reception from the consumers.  The trust level was incredible; the interaction was moving. Issues at times but you expect it in this field.  I learned that these mentally disabled consumers need direction, compassion and someone that's open to communicate with.  Management a big part .
Especially, time management.  Time Management is very important when the workload are (8) consumers, with different mental illnessess; different needs.  I find that patience is vitally essential .
Co-workers were easy to get along with.  Every individual had something very special to bring to the table.  The hardest part at times was diffusing the dissention, however, it all worked out.
The m ost enjoyable part of the job was motivating the consumers to do their in-house chores and as time progressed, consumers took on their assignments w/o direction or supervision.

Community Connections will work you down to your last for very little in return.  This job is ENTRY LEVEL ONLY.  After you get your experience and/or find a better paying job you will want to leave, unfortunately.  They only care able the completion of your clinical notes to bill for medicaid.  It seems that they could care less about our demographic or the employees slaving to do the work.  CC would rather continue to give our clients new case managers 100 times over than to raise the moral of the job for the employees.  The employees here start as passionate individuals looking to make change and leave tired,underpaid medicaid billing robots! Love yourself and chose something else.  I am grateful for the lives I've touched and the friends I've made though.

I can honestly say this was my worst job. I wanted to love it so much, however the management in this place is a joke. The amount of work they have you doing compared to the pay is also a joke. You might as well just be a taxi driver  because all they want you to do here is drive people around. There is no teaching the clients independence here it's a glorified babysitting job. This job is unsafe and very unpredictable, the managers do not go in the field often. They tell you upon hire that this company has a high turnover rate which I see why now. They are currently talking about extrapolation, which I don't think this company will be around long at all. Do yourself a favor and look into working for a company in VA.

very fast pace work environment, i received plenty of experience with people from all cultures. Learn how to solve problems without the supervisor assistant, I also became multi-task along with other duties Were able to learn how to verify insurance information , open and close the office..Errands for the doctors. Community Connection was such a great experience for me , This company was like my family away from family that"s how much love and respect the office showed it other.  i can truly say that it was an honor working with them.

Typical day consisted of arriving early for a meeting then having to spend the majority of the day chauferring clients around. The position was more a long the lines of a glorified babysitter without the necessary compensation. A 40 hour week turned into 50 or 60 but you were only compensated for 40. You usually came out to a parking ticket on your car as parking enforcement unfairly targeted most employees' cars. If you found a way to make less money for the company but was in the client's best interest, they found a way to no longer need your services.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Controller 5 salaries reported	$137,500 per year
Case manager 4 salaries reported	$25.49 per hour
Senior manager talent partner 3 salaries reported	$100,000 per year
Practice nurse 3 salaries reported	$167,500 per year
Medical biller 2 salaries reported	$60,300 per year

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