substance abuse counselor

registered nurse

licensed practical nurse

counselor

monitor

Gateway-Foundation

What is the best part of working at the company?
Clocking out and hour lunch and the benefits are great 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Upper management listen to clients over staff always . Walking in and not knowing if you have a job. They talk to you like your children and not a adults working as a team. Upper managers talk to you like you are beneath them. There is NO ONE YOU CAN REPORT TO if you have a problem with staff they look pass your complaint and take there side. Treatment is disrespectful all the time, they do not care about you only time they Upper management are great Actors. The whole staff needs to be investigation because they are dating clients when not supposed to at all but if you are part of the click you can do what u want. But if not they will make your life there like you are inmate. They treat you worse then the clients that walk in there. If you are a person that can stand up for yourself and report they do not want you to work there. There is no team work no training of how to deal with staff and clients. Trust you report on Upper staff it will never get passed Upper staff. Mandatory is everyday work overtime and you will not know until it's time to go hit you with you staying it doesn't matter if you anything going on. You will stay even if your very sick as long as they have bodies to cover the shift. You suck up to them always agree to what they doing you will probably be the last they will ask to stay over. They want you to drink the same water and ice from clients because you can not bring your own NASTY NASTY to many staff sleeping with clients they can't keep anyone at all for long term especially if you complain about how things are ran. The pop- up rules that change all the time and they pass it by talking about it in briefing before you are assigned a dorm. They will ask the click team people first where they want to go do there shift,then the rest is for staff they can't stand and want to make them quit or walk off just so they say you abandoned your post. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Disrespectful and very stressful also danger to your health. If you don't have medical problems you will after 3 weeks of working there at Humble Gateway Foundation. Headquarters from Chicago need to come and Clean house from HR to Leads 1 and 2. Start Over and it could actually be a great place to work. But when I say stressful and very very toxic environment unsafe. You don't have good equipment like Radios half time they can't hear you. Management only answer or talk to you because you  they don't care unless it's managers click team. You will never move up unless you have puppy face to them. Also they let you move up even if you can't run a dorm by yourself and report in overnight shift. Some about 3 staff of Upper management is great to work with that will step up and help or direct you to the person.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
You go to briefing talk about things that a happen on last shift report. Then you go to your sign dorm. You walk in the dorm speak loud Lady or Man in the dorm walk floor and check doors make sure you locked. You do your paperwork and at the same time you are by yourself watch at least 40-60 clients per dorm A&B side. Making sure that clients stay in Dorm all while you need to be finished with paperwork.

I loved my clients and had great rapport with them. My groups were always open and relaxed and the clients responded very well to my style. The clients and a few dependable coworkers were the best parts of this job. Everything else was a nightmare. The units are incredibly understaffed for many reasons - not hiring adequate staff, firing people for questionable reasons, high turnover, etc. The floor staff (C1s) are expected to do EVERYTHING, while the primary counselors (C2s, or with no consistency, C1s who they pay as a C1 but put in a C2 role) sit in their offices their entire shift. Lazy floor staff who don’t get up from the control station desk or look up from their phone aren’t reprimanded, but the floor staff like myself who worked hard and did EVERYTHING (run groups, take clients on smoke/meal breaks, round clients up for groups and breaks, monitor floor activity during down time/rec time, manage the nightly paperwork, check rooms, etc.) were called to the carpet for the pettiest things, mostly due to a complete lack of communication or direction from the supervisors, and the ever changing, fly by night policies that were randomly implemented whenever upper management found it convenient. There was NO consistency with policy and procedure. You never knew what you were going to do wrong in a day, but it was always something. 

Upper management are snakes. Once you work in different divisions of the facility, you see the cut throat behind the scenes decision making that creates the incredibly toxic work environment. 

Staff are considered disposable. Fire one, have others cover shifts and work 16 hour shifts. Don’t count on getting the 30 minute break you’re supposed to get. But they sure do go ahead and take that time out of your pay. Don’t trust your supervisors or upper management. They will throw you under the bus the first chance they get. Or fire you. They have unqualified people in clinical supervisor roles. They have overqualified people in entry level roles. Management makes a lot of empty promises, or flat out lies. They’ll vet you for “promotion” (and by that I mean giving you more responsibility but keep your title and pay the same), and then not deliver. Or if they do, you’re expected to do the work of both a C1 AND a C2. It’s a setup for failure. 

I could go on and on, but I’ll just end by saying this. Do not work here. It’s the most toxic work environment I’ve ever been a part of, and it was 100% due to poor management. I loved the clients. They deserve better. So do the staff who help save their lives.

I was excited about this job when I first started, but later I was no longer enjoying the work here, nor did I find it fulfilling. The only thing I enjoyed about the job was the client interaction, and the 1 on 1 counseling with some clients. Overall, I am not happy with Gateway. The place does not train employees before they start them, and the employees and the higher ups blame you for my work performance at first. The place is very unorganized, and they don't prioritize the safety of the employees or the clients. The company cares more about the money that they are making with having the clients there, then providing them with their treatment. The nurses can be in danger of losing their license, when one client gets high of taking another clients prescription, and the company doesn't kick those clients out, because they don't want to lose a client because they don't want to lose money. I heard they are dishonest to the clients before they get send to the facility. They lied to them that they are going to have their own room, and that they get to keep their phones with them all day, and make the employees deal with the clients acting out. The experience at Gateway was nice, but this place has more cons then any other place I've worked. The place has lost a lot of employees and clients, it seems to be going downhill. The place also agrees to talk negative about other employees during meetings, and that is gossiping, very unprofessional.

The most enjoyable part of the job is working directly with the clientele who themselves are severely under serviced and need the help. Gateway struggles to hire and retain qualified help--in part due to their over emphasis on "employee retention" which translates into tolerating a lot of unethical conduct from staff, with no help from the state level to ameliorate such problems. Workplace culture within company and Department of Corrections is generally pessimistic and morale is constantly low. You have to be highly self-motivated with a strong sense of identity, purpose and calling to have any longevity in this company as employees who do work diligently are not recognized for their efforts. Gateway employees and their services are generally looked down upon by all other service providers in the institution as being less than and substandard. The Department of Corrections officers are typically abrasive, disparaging and undermining towards staff and the services being provided; the Administration will reluctantly intervene to amend their staff's behavior only after a long standing series of documented significant incidents have occurred. What I learned from this company is that the integrity of management and the culture/ environment of where you work should be a significant factor in your job search-- I have refused to make the same mistake again and have become more diligent in my employer vetting process on account of Gateway.

As part of an interdisciplinary team I have had many opportunities to develop as a well rounded therapist and addiction counselor. A typical day at work starts at 7:00am and continues past 3:00pm many days. There is a combination of direct counselor to client duties, milieu responsibilities, and leading groups. There never seems to be a dull moment as there are upwards of 30+ clients on a daily basis. The director I work for has been instrumental in constantly improving our unit and it has been challenging to keep up with our growing needs, though also a great pleasure. My co-workers are a testimony to team work, we are very diverse with a broad range of backgrounds and talents. The good thing about it all is that our clients have a lot of great choices when it comes to having their needs meet. In my judgment it is always win-win for them. The hardest part of my job is seeing people relapse into their old thinking which ends up in old using behavior. In some cases that means we hear back that somebody has died. The only thing that makes this bearable are the success I get to share and experience. I want to focus on the people who have changed their lives. We have alumni meetings once a month where former clients who are staying clean and sober come in to support each other and stay connected to Gateway Foundation. I always stop in to say hi to the miraculous lives in action.

There are significant concerns regarding workplace culture and management practices. Supervisors frequently speak negatively to staff, and employees who report issues experience retaliation. When retaliation is reported, those concerns are often dismissed or ignored.

There have also been instances where supervisors appear to act outside of policy to justify terminating employees, with higher-level management approving these actions. At the same time, policy enforcement is inconsistent—some employees are allowed to violate attendance rules, such as no call/no show occurrences, without consequence.

Professional boundaries are also a concern. Certain staff members appear to have unusually close relationships with leadership, including exclusive group communications and social outings, which create perceptions of favoritism and exclusion. Additionally, the program director has been reported to engage in gossip and spread misinformation about staff. When this behavior was brought forward, it was minimized rather than addressed.

Despite these concerns, the role itself was fulfilling. The workload was engaging and steady, allowing me to remain focused throughout the day and complete responsibilities effectively, even during breaks.

I was initially very excited about a position as Clinical Supervisor at Gateway Foundation. I was originally hired for the women's prison, I kept calling HR to get a start date without an answer. A few days before my notice at my old job was over I received a call stating that the position was no longer needed. They then offered me a job at the Detroit Reentry Center. I accepted. The clients and staff were great. I also enjoyed working with MDOC staff. As time went on more and more duties were being added to my job and to the counselors I supervised,, without any consideration from upper management about how this would impact care of clients or the counselors. I was told I would have to work Saturdays but after a few months I had to start working Saturdays then they said we needed Sunday programming as well. I would have not accepted the job had I known this prior.  I was working 6 days a week and covering more than a case load (24-48 clients) for months when I wasn't supposed to ever have a case load. I went several months without being able to take a lunch. My concerns and the concerns of counselors seemed to go unheard.Gateway constantly changed how they wanted to things so it was hard to have any balance or structure. Groups had 24 clients in them. It would have been a wonderful experience had Gateway been more organized with what they required and methodical in their implementation of things.

There's so much to say about this job but I'll keep it simple. $$$ pretty much sums up my experience at this job. The clients were a money sign and they knew/felt it. The workers were treated as if they were disposable. Higher level would pretend to care about the workers concerns but would not relay the concerns to those who mattered or cared to put actions to their words. The best moments were with the team (which had nothing to do with management). The team worked well together for the most part given that they were the only support they had. The counselors were also extremely caring and the clients agreed. The counselors would have to make up excuses on why management did not do their job or refused to make changes. The population was hard to work with in general so the lack of support made the job that much more difficult. I believe there is a huge possibility that it is only this location. The turnover rate is high, their referral rate is low, and I honestly do not feel that the best services to prevent relapse is provided. This location was just a babysitting place for those who didn't want to sit in jail as they await their court date.

A typical day at work consists of completing 2 or 3 individual sessions, not including any daily intakes. Must facilitate 2 or 3 groups a day including a process group 4 days a week with clients. A caseload is usually 25, however , depending on staffing a counselor may have up to 35 clients to handle monthly. Management is average, lots of changes weekly which is a frustrating occurrence, however the ability to role with the change helps you to learn to work efficiently and under pressure, which is a plus in this career field. Co-workers are helpful and efficient, constant work as team members keeps us on our toes as counselors. The hardest part of the job can be all the different rules to follow. Working for a prison and a company means that we have conflicting rules at times, also CO's are trained for security which at times hinders our job to provide quality care for clients, always in a constant state of referring and helping clients understand that they are on their way home, so do what ever it takes to keep the peace and stay out of the way of the guards. The most enjoying part of the job is the clients having that moment of clarity, watching them excel through the program and leaving with a sense of confidence and encouragement as they take on this new life of recovering what was lost within themselves.

i was a mentor/councler adveradge day consisted of working with peers about their strugles thay were faceing help with tactics to improve on there problems and research on the program to help gain knoladge of other tactics and plans to help peers and myself with every day life and to report to counlcers on my team as well about problem areas in the comunity comunication was a problem with gateway thay seem to only talk to whom thay want and to be honest with whom thay want which made my job challangeing and forced me to be more enter active because it appeared that the care from staff was a minamum there over all it was an ever changeing work enviorment for the worst and we were not allowed to talk about Christ openly in a bunch of classes which wasnt working out for me either i worked as a councler/mentor for around 3 months before rezineing from my position there ...

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Substance abuse counselor 10 salaries reported	$23.56 per hour
Registered nurse 13 salaries reported	$38.99 per hour
Licensed practical nurse 8 salaries reported	$34.36 per hour
Counselor 5 salaries reported	$28.20 per hour
Monitor 10 salaries reported	$17.25 per hour

Working at Gateway Foundation: Company Overview and Reviews

Gateway Foundation

Gateway Foundation Ratings

Popular jobs at Gateway Foundation

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected