occupational therapist

physical therapist

speech language pathologist

registered behavior technician

career manager

First Step

First step claims to be helping children with disabilities and delays. Their mission statement sounds good, and I'm sure what they tell parents and new employees sounds like they are making the world a better place. However, once kids are there they are being placed into classrooms with far too many children. Some classes have almost 30 4/5 year olds in one room. The last thing a severely autistic child needs is to be placed in a room with that many kids. There is no way to work individually with a child so most of the daily objectives are not being worked on. There are many kids there that are not delayed. The testing is done in a way that makes it seem they are when they aren't so that first step doesn't lose funds from those kids. The instructors make minimum wage and have nothing more than some very basic"training". There are coordinators who are qualified to be teaching the classes over the rooms but they are not in the rooms most of the time. They have now placed a "lead instructor" over each class in the absence of the coordinator. This person is a minimum wage worker with no extra training. 
It's not fair to the kids and it's not fair to the parents who truly think they are doing what's best for their kids. I feel that the parents don't know they are sending their kids off to basically be babysat. They think they are sending the kids to trained professionals who can help prepare them for school and that's not what we are.

Typical day, reported to my office and made phone calls on behalf of my clients in which our company was their guardian in order to keep up their living. Documentation and appointments were made and attended for SSI, Medicaid, Medicare, etc. Completed evaluations and approvals in order to keep all Supportive Living Services Active for the consumers. Also made daily visits to the all clients homes to make contacts and to join in on activities. It was the greatest staff anyone could've worked with. But in the midst of it being a great job, it was a very difficult job also seeing that I was working with severely disable adults. Not to mention my youngest brother recieves in house services from the same company. So it hits home to know how much they really need help just to live. However, each and every day when they get excited as if I were Santa Clause himself, it makes me feel extremely blessed and joyful.

I would get to work aroung 0730. The children would begin to arrive around 0745. The would begin their day with breakfast. Then we would go to circle time and read a book and talk about what we would do that day. I would work with my certain five children assigned to me. We would go over their skills they needed to master in this time period. The hardest part of this job was getting the children to cooperate. They were easily distracted and wanted to play, but when they mastered a skill was the best part. It made me happy that I could teach a child with disabilities something they would use everyday. My co-workers were a fun group of women to be around. We kept each other competent on our job duties. After we worked on the goals for a couple hours, we would go to recess then lunch. Nap time was after lunch. During lunch time, I did my days worth of paperwork. I documented what each child had accomplished for the day. After nap the children went home. This was between 1430 and 1530.

On a typical day at First Step you encounter something new everyday dealing with children. Even though I have the nescssary training to be a direct care worker I am not because of the job title i chose. In the mornings and evenings I am a driver in which i transport clients to and from school. And during the day hours I am a maintenance worker. Sometimes when the company is short on staff I assist also in the classrooms with the wonderful and fun loving co-workers present there. And I would say the hardest thing about my job is having to say bye to my clients each and everyday because the enjoy being around you but I love my job simply because i love children

I loved getting to know all of our consumers, their families and getting to help them.  I enjoyed most of the people I worked with.  However, I was on-call 24/7-365, so when my phone rang I had to drop everything right then (which meant I missed parts of holiday get togethers, had to walk out on family dinners, missed out on my kids ball games and more). My pay was no where near enough for all of the work I had to do (I didn't get paid for being on-call either).  I had to give up some holidays to complete my work because along with office work I also had to travel many miles every month to see all of my consumers.  And I didn't feel appreciated by upper management.

I worked for this company for 8 years and the work environment was very friendly. Everyone worked well with each other and the director was very friendly as well. The health insurance along with other policies were very reasonable and they also matched your 401K. Even tho there were a lot of good things about this company it also had its downfalls. When I first started working for this company we were given a raise, but after about 3 years they stopped giving us a raise.

A typical day at work included being bit, scratched, punched, kicked, etc because there are direct caregivers that aren’t paying any attention.  What I learned  is how to be compassionate, I saw not one ounce of it there so I knew exactly what not to do. Management…deplorable. Zero effective communication and no motivation to improve the organization. The hardest part of the job is knowing so many people don’t care. 

First Step, Inc use to be a great place to work for.  They have slowly taken days away and there has been no raises.  They have become all about the money and not the minds of staff.  The more time people work with these kids with no breaks it can be horrible to maintain composure.  I hope First Step gets back to the way it once was.

i help consumers work on their independent living goals,self goals,communication ,medication skills, money management,non profit organization providing service for adult  and children with special needs the most enjoyable part of my job is seeing their smiling faces when they accomplish something,the hardest part of the job is you will have bad days

In my time at First Step I was physically attacked every day by the patients with very ineffective methods of dealing with it. I was sent into the E.R. and had months of medical leave because of one incident where a patient punched me in the chest. When I returned I was promised policy changes and I continued to be beat up. b

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Occupational therapist 1 salary reported	$70.00 per hour
Physical therapist 1 salary reported	$70.00 per hour
Speech language pathologist 1 salary reported	$60.00 per hour
Registered behavior technician 3 salaries reported	$16.00 per hour
Career manager 3 salaries reported	$16.00 per hour

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