youth counselor

seasonal warehouse associate

case worker

clinician

program supervisor

Key Program, Inc.

If you work at a single gendered household or a youth (12 and under) program it's do-able. If you work with teens, especially at the co-ed house I worked, you're asking for stress and turbulation. 

I was employed at a co-ed teen facility in Greenfield. The first few weeks I felt capable of sustaining there as I worked closely with a supervising staff member who had been there for over a decade and thus could tackle issues i couldn't. With no supervisors on shift there was no respect received via the clients without resorting to barbaric tactics which I refused to do. I was there for close to three months and quit before a 2k bonus would be issued for sticking with such a high turnover position. That said in my 3 month time span I saw 5 co-workers come and go. For me the work/life balance became too much to manage with supervisors constantly changing your schedule + house makeup literally hours before your shift. Management also refusing to honor work  schedule changes to help adjust your stress. This is all besides how the head clinician would speak to me so condescendingly when I attempted to talk to her about anything.

A typical day was in the hands of the client as if they chose when they want to cooperate. Because all but a few staff members are new no one had enough time to learn the structure and feel confidant in executing it. Days could be fairly solid as on weekdays MOST clients would go to school, return, complete ADLs and participate in screen time before dinner. Afterwards things were expected to wind down. The issue was that often times clients would attempt to participate in their secret relationships or simply disregard the intended structure as there were no real consequences past certain restrictions. Ironically the restrictions only made it so clients couldn't leave the house which was the one thing that would obviously cause them act better. Paperwork was expected to be completed throughout the day which was impossible to do for having to keep an eye on clients activities. 

The culture was restrictive and suffocating. Often times staff would come up with ideas of things to do with clients which would be shut down by management because of some idea that they'd get into mischief off grounds. This is despite the job literally requiring us to be within eyesight and arms reach most of the time. There was also no opportunities to build a relationship with co-workers outside of attempting to divide the group and thus I never got to know my co-workers outside of a surface level without my own active participation. 

The hardest part of the job is the constant lack of care from clients and on call support. This worked in conjunction with a lack of effective consequences making client behaviors worse. There really needs to be a restrictive, outpatient option for clients who refuse to follow the structure with the idea of stabilizing them and showing them what life could be like if they're truly unwilling to learn how to follow rules and structure.

The most enjoyable part of the job? Leaving and going home. Second most enjoyable part? My co-workers who trauma bonded with me. Third? Honestly probably leaving again, but with clients on off grounds trips as even they seemed much happier away from the household.

Honestly, this isn't worth applying to if you have to work where I did and because the need is so high at my former household you'll likely end up there eventually. I'm still out over $400 for reimbursements I incurred over the last month of my employment from recreation trips I was subjected to attend on my own dime with words that I'd be repayed.

Key is great if you learn best when everything is on fire. Senior leadership acknowledges this is a “bachelor’s job”, best done by new grads without loved ones at home (whom you will only see for one of the three summer and winter major holidays respectively). You’ll either be okay with that or not. You’ll get 40 hours of classroom style training—your only 40 hour week unless they ask you to come to your program after training—and then you’re lucky if you don’t get thrown onto ratio before your site-specific week of shadowing seasoned staff. Maybe you’re really good, maybe there are multiple restraints and you’re a body. The caseworker/counselor position is glorified floor staff. You’ll love the kids (and/or teens, and hopefully not both in one program), you’ll either like (or get Stockholm syndrome about) your coworkers, who you’ll see more than your own friends, family and home. You’ll do most of the job on autopilot—policy is clear and direct—so you can be attuned to your clients and programmatic needs when emergencies arise. They will arise. You will kinda-sorta figure out your caffeine and self-care balance so you can manage the mandatory OT (the clients are worth it, and frankly so is the pay) and you’ll even try to come back early after your first workers’ comp injuries because ultimately you’re now invested in your program, your colleagues, and of course the actual kiddos. You’ll remind yourself “policy says I don’t have to be a hero” but you’re a floor staff no matter what your role, and you don’t want others to get hurt. 

Key will use you, and you will use them back. They promote on the basis of hard work, need, and perceived loyalty/compliance, even if the work is not good or ethical. 

Be good and ethical anyway. File if your gut tells you too, even if you’re going against a higher up’s advice/directive. Listen and learn from the good clinicians and supervisors; this is one of the few jobs at this level where you WILL have regular individual supervision unless you gotta reschedule because you’re in a physical hold. 

This is a burnout job. You’ll leave once you realize you have too much trauma and too many opportunities to stay where you are—and you’ll be right to do it. Do the right thing, take advantage of the 18 month advancement-or-transitional support policy and get out of there before your lose too much blood or heart. Beware the long arms of regional and senior leadership. Leave on good terms or they will literally flip a coin to decide whether or not to sabotage your next job. 

If you are in western mass and youth residential is your path, they are definitively the best option. NFI might be competitive if you’re in its area. Overall this was a terrible experience, but not as bad as competing agencies. The bar is on the floor but Key’s pay and insurance do speak to their professionalism. Good luck taking your vacation time, but they’re still one of the few agencies keeping up with cost of living. 

TL;DR Consider just going straight to grad school first and applying to this agency in a clinical or administrative role after an internship, but otherwise make sure your own mental health, ethics, and emergency contacts are solid before you start. 

At first glance, Key Program appears to be a very professional, well-structured program. However, after getting acclimated to the program, the cracks start to appear everywhere. The program "management" consists of almost exclusively women in their early 20's who just graduated college. It is very drama filled, cliquey, and poorly ran. If you're looking to move up within this company, you better hope you're a part of their "inner circle", otherwise you can expect to be a direct care staff for quite some time- if you make it that far. Although most programs have a high turnover rate, I've never quite seen one like this. The most senior staff in my position had been there 4 months when I started. This is probably due to the supervisory team, all well as the administrative team, who will go to extreme measures to pass on their responsibilities to the bottom of the totem pole. Although part of being an administrator is being on call- which at times requires covering shifts- they will instead make someone in a lower position stay for a double to cover the shift instead. When interviewing, you are told you get one weekend off a month. In my time there (4 months) I got 1 weekend off. Vacation time gets denied because they cannot staff their program. People in the inner circle seemed to get 1 or 2 weekends off a month though, and all their requests. Due to the "restorative approach" this company utilizes, the kids can do or say whatever they want whenever they want, with virtually 0 consequences. They call the shots here. This is especially great when you work with Temp Agency staff who are there strictly for a ratio requirement, and are effectively useless leaving you and 1 other staff overwhelmed. You can have a great time managing behaviors while the supervisors sit in their office with the door closed and watch movies. Also, Key Program Supervisors are required to "dock" you twice a month, which basically means they have to find something to give you a "strike" on to meet their quota. (2 supervisors confirmed this to me) Instead of giving credit where it's due, they will actively search for things to give you a strike on. For example, I got a strike for talking to my coworkers too much, and another for leaving a book open in a locked office. Although I did enjoy my short time here, the politics of the place and unprofessionalism from "higher ups" really ruined it for me.

A very rewarding job no question. Every job has its ups and downs. Some days I LOVE my job. But some days I hate it. My issues are the management never stops asks you for more and more. I’ve seen myself and my co workers bend over backwards with little to no recognition of our effort and time. You shouldn’t have to basically kill yourself to be barely appreciated for all the work you do. Oh and don’t expect to get a break ever!! 
Also, good luck setting boundaries for yourself— they don’t care about your well-being. They will schedule you to work at 6 am after working until 11pm consistently and then look at you like you have 3 heads when you ask for basic human decency. The mental burnout of the nonstop demands of the job ontop of the poor management can start to feel over bearing. You’re almost not allowed to get sick or have personal things going on as your whole life is expected to be dedicated to this program and job. The structure of the programs suck and kids are forced to basically spend everyday constantly just sitting down on a couch. I wonder why they act out?? My coworkers and the kids are the best part of my job. The management acts as a separate elite team and as they are better than you instead of teaching you and building you up. They act like you’re not doing enough as you’re literally getting assaulted on the daily. Yet want to present us all as a “team”. I’m sure the mental burnout has taken a toll on them and made them indifferent to the constant turnover of employment. Yet I can’t help but wonder if the lack of employees has to do with the fact that they treat you like you’re replaceable and throw you into a water of sharks 24/7 and are never around at the most inconvenient times. It takes a special person to deal with such a unnecessarily negative work space. Care more about your floor workers please key. We are humans too. And we’re the good ones.

This is a great position for any recent graduates looking for social services work. The benefits are good for entry-level work in the area, and they hire just about anybody with a degree in anything from any institution. However, be prepared for much, much more than you can handle. The work load and expectations for caseworkers are totally unrealistic. If you want to work a ton (I'm talking 50-80 hours weekly), and can handle in-patient mental health level clients in an outpatient, behavioral level facility, then this job is perfect for you. Make no mistake, you will be assaulted while working for Key. You will have to physically restrain minors and you will be alone in public with unpredictable clients. If you have any sort of life, prepare to sacrifice it to Key, as you will be working overtime every week to overcome 2 self-perpetuating realities of the company: managers who are too busy to hire as needed, and a high turnover rate because of burnout. However, if you thrive on challenging (be prepared to work up to 2 16 hour shifts a week; normal shifts are 9 hours with no lunch break) experiences, then this will be a very rewarding experience for you and you will be paid 14/hr for it with plenty of overtime. Also, if you are the type of person who likes to work off the clock, this job is for you. You will be expected to stay late almost every night to finish your work, and they will (seriously, I'm not kidding) expect you to do the work off the clock much of the time. It was part of the culture there that if there wasn't time in the day to finish certain mandatory reports, they had to be done post-shift off the clock. Some of this stuff can take over an hour, especially when it's approaching midnight and you want to go home. Not having breaks is also part of the culture, and you will be very quickly singled out if you mark "no break offered" on your time sheet. In a way, it was a very good experience for me, but the bad outweighed the good and that is ultimately the reason why I didn't stay.

There is no happy medium here. You meet for weekly staff meetings and as a caseworker, do not get much chance for giving input, and are often belittled and spoken to like you were born yesterday. So many inconsistency issues, do as I say not as I do situations, lack of appropriate caseworker-supervisor "supervision" sessions, you expect to work there and help kids. Truth is when a kid is angry and you are talking them down and a supervisor yells at you not to talk to them until they serve a timeout or whatever...yeah, it just gets the kid amped back up. They tell you not to get into power struggles yet senior staff and supervisors do it and it leads to avoidable restraints. You can't leave when your shift is over because of lack of staff to relieve you. Instead of being thanked and shown any sort of appreciation for staying because no one is available to relieve you, they find any little thing you could do wrong and throw it all in your face. Oh and restraint reports? Cannot even tell you how many I have written and had rewritten by a supervisor to make it sound like the kid was acting more violently than they were. Some staff have caused harm to clients in restraints however it is covered up by fudging reports to make it sound like staff did everything to the letter. If funding agencies and labor department really knew how this place operated they would have so many issues. Oh and lets not forget they record everything on camera on the 2nd floor in 2 houses at this point. So they can continue to nitpick at staff who are going to continue to grow tired of it and be gone.

Was a residential case worker until they "mis matched" me. Most of the kids are on the autism scale or have psychological disorders but these are not acknowledged nor treated. If they were they'd be moved somewhere for that and Key wouldn't get the grant money. So they hush you when you bring it up. So mental illness and autism are treated as behavioral problems. 

The NVCI is a needed thing, but often staff is ordered to restrain kids without real justification then told what to write to hide the abuses. Supervisors decide who they don't like and will use staff to make their life miserable.

The program consist of weekly 20 minute "therapy" sessions with a social worker and that's it. No actual psychological care for kids with mental illnesses.

The supervisors suffer from chronic illogicalness. If the paperwork that's shared responsibilities isn't done 1 person gets blamed. In a program full of clients who are suicidal, self harming, flight risks, potential S E X offenders, violent, and autistic the supervisors are more prone to yell at staff for allowing the kids to have their feet in the couch.

The nutrition system is awful. Protein Starch and Veggie for each meal. No one needs a starch every meal.

When certain staff decide they don't want you in their club they mismatch you.

All in all The Key program offers no treatment, just takes in clients so they can collect money.

As a 25+ year employee, I have worked in multiple positions. Key Program, Inc. has afforded me the ability to gain experience in areas that I wanted to learn more about.  They assisted me with continued education to have a foundation for the new things I wanted to learn about.  From direct care, supervisory, administrative, and management positions I feel like I have seen and done it all.   The direct care staff are the most important role in this agency, working day in and day out with our at-risk youth. The supervisory staff work diligently to  accommodate employees to the best of their ability and the bottom line is that the youth are the most important and their care.  This is an agency that allows people, new to the field, the ability to gain experience for their next position.  It is a stepping stone in the human services field.   The hardest part of working in residential programs is that we don't ever close.  We aren't a retail store that closes the doors and turns off the lights at 9:00pm.  We are unable to work with "one less cashier".  With that being said, if a teammate calls out of work, someone has to stay to cover the sick teammates hours.  The most enjoyable part of the job is that we are taking care of some of the most at risk youth in the state.   These kids need people like us to work with them, take care of them, help them work through the traumatic experiences that brought them to us.  

Working with at-risk adolescents is not for everybody. The Key Program upper management team realizes this and did an excellent job supporting employees. This is the perfect company to get your foot in the door in the Human Service field. Although the hours can be long and you have to work weekends the professional experience you gain from working at Key is excellent. 
You have to be a team player working at Key as you will have to depend on your co-workers in a number of different situations a large percentage of time. Whether it's dealing with a teen in crisis or simply just devising a plan for your shift you have to be able to work as part of a team or you aren't going to be successful at Key. 
Management strives to be as supportive as possible as they know how hard working in the programs can be at times as they have all been in your shoes at one point. They have a wealth of knowledge in the Human Service field and are willing to share this knowledge with you to get you where you want to be.
Overall, if you're willing to eat, sleep and live at Key for approximately 18 months I can guarantee at the end of those 18 months you will have learned more than you thought you were going to learn personally and professionally and you will have gained most of the skills needed to move on in the Human Service field.

There is no typical day when working with kids with behavioral and trauma issues.  Their in this level of care because the haven't been able to work with community based programs to make safe appropriate discussions.  You hope for the best everyday and prepare for the worst.  A strong team and supervisorial staff is there to support you.  

Just as any job you'll work at "Management doesn't understand".  You may not think so, but the support, training, advocating, educational reimbursement, and bonus that go one are a sign they understand retention is important.  Training is paramount and further the employees education is mutually beneficial to both parties. 

I learned so many things.  The amount of training that occurs yearly is tremendous. I could list a dozen, but ultimately I learned to be a professional.  You'll be dealing with people with their Masters and PHD's and your the expert they are looking for regarding information on a situation or a youth.  

Co-workers are the key because of the trying situations and long hours.  It becomes almost a second family.  

Hardest part of the job is getting a youth to see their potential that you see in them.  When it does happen it's like pure gold and gives you a boost to keep working with the population.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Youth counselor 22 salaries reported	$23.68 per hour
Seasonal warehouse associate 18 salaries reported	$23.28 per hour
Case worker 25 salaries reported	$23.84 per hour
Clinician 13 salaries reported	$74,192 per year
Program supervisor 2 salaries reported	$72,680 per year

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