youth specialist

case worker

family therapist

social worker

therapist

The Childrens Village

Hiring managers routinely lie to new employees, promising a supportive work culture and a 35 hr work week with a flexible schedule. The truth is that we have to clock in AT LEAST 35 hours a week in the office, however, it takes 55 - 60 hours of chronic over-working to fulfill our minimum job requirements. We all worked nights & weekends on top of long days, with no work- life balance. We were each required to work with 5 families with whom we had to have 2 face-to-face meetings per week (10 home visits) in addition to endless documentation requirements. Some clients live 1 or 2 hours away and if they're not home for the scheduled appt. we have to make the commute multiple times in the same week. Most of the cases are referred by Child Protective Services (i.e. Parents are strong-armed into "agreeing" to accept our services or face punitive sanctions from CPS). The Childrens Village receives funding based on it's (allegedly) high rate of success, which is evidence based. Either every case is an independently documented "success" within 3 - 5 months or we get roasted by our supervisors. Once we receive a case, we are required to document each child's progress on a weekly basis in terms of school attendance, academic success, lack of criminal activity, they and their parent(s)/ guardian(s) testing clean and sober as well as meeting community and family behavioral expectations. If the kids don't improve, we get in trouble. If the families won't meet with us twice a week or comply with our therapeutic suggestions, we get in trouble. Supervisors routinely instruct us to bribe our non-compliant clients with pizza and other food items to let us in the door! (Think about a therapist calling you repeatedly and even going so far as to knock on your door promising you pizza or donuts if you just let her in, how crazy is that?!?) There is intense, unrelenting pressure from management to "do whatever it takes" (This is the company mantra which even appears on it's literature and is regularly repeated in supervision and at office meetings). This pretty much sums up the work culture - if you "do whatever it takes" your cases will be successful and if they're not successful, clearly you're NOT doing "whatever it takes." The Children's Village is laser focused on their stats, from top management down, and there is a zero tolerance policy for any excuses why MST therapists can't document that every child we work with is clean, sober, attending school regularly, passing classes and behaving themselves within short order (By the way, every child we work must evidence "chronic delinquent behaviors" in order to qualify for MST services at The Childrens Village. These cases are the ones CPS waves the white flag on and calls us in as back-up). It's a pressure cooker - working with the most highly challenging adolescents and their families, the majority of whom do not want our help to begin with, pushing ourselves into their homes and personal lives unwanted from day one and then we perpetually lean on these people who are already going through a lot of hardships to meet pre-determined "therapeutic goals" to avoid being criticized by our supervisors while being constantly dogged by looming deadlines for lengthy weekly progress notes, periodic comprehensive reports on each family, monthly chart audits on top of long commutes to and from home visits in often unsafe areas, individual supervision to further track progress on each case, weekly group supervision to additionally track progress on each case (in front of all our colleagues!) and periodic dept mtgs, trainings, etc. The workload is completely overwhelming. Needless to say, everyone quits in a year. Toxic place - do not work here!!!

As a Youth Specialist at the Children's Village, specifically the TRAC Program, you can expect that your day will follow a schedule to assist in a consistency and flow. However, that will be the only thing you can guarantee will be the same from day to day.

In order to fill this position, you must be willing to wear multiple hats at the same time while being able to switch gears and go from cooking lunch or dinner, for example, to having a Life Space Interview (LSI) with a minor to identify problematic behavior or assist in cleaning the cottage to build a rapport with the residents. This is not a job, it becomes a lifestyle. To say that you will not become emotionally invested in your residents would be a folly.

The leadership at the Children's Village TRAC Program is wonderful, they are attentive, open to suggestions and proactive in their roles as a bridge between the upper echelon of the organization and the front line staff. However, for every amazing Assistant or Senior Supervisor there are also those individuals who have become complacent or, at times, detrimental to the staff with their lack of attention or laziness. While this is not enough to damage the overall experience in the organization, it will still leave a bad taste in your mouth when you come across these certain individuals. This problem is only exacerbated by the fact that said individuals are high tier decision makers who at times seem to be unapproachable.

The Children's Village TRAC program is an amazing, close knit, progressive place to work where your input will be valued and your work appreciated by the residents and your supervisors. Limited advancement opportunities make long-term employment options limited, but the right candidates will find no trouble making lateral or horizontal advancements through either the program or the organization in general. This is not the place for those persons who are easily offended or in need of constant approval. You will need thick skin to survive, but if you do the reward of knowing you've helped a child and done so while making a wage you can live off of and having a full benefits package only makes it that much sweeter.

A typical day is different everyday. One day you’ll have an office visit, next you have all day meetings, then you’ll have to do home visits for parents and children. Your day you planned out will sometimes not go the way you expected it to go. 

Working this role was great for experience and growth as a person. However, the environment was toxic. Management would oftentimes have meetings as a group and will ridicule you in front of everyone. Anytime you did a good job or closed out a case, they said “good job” and were quick to assign a new case or expected you to quickly move on to the next thing. They emphasize importance of “mental health” and “self care” but it felt like at the end of the day, they didn’t really care. You have to give it your all 24/7 and if you don’t, they scold you. Some offices had snarky employees while other offices had good support systems. Some employees you can tell were purposely trying to throw you under the bus. Also, some upper management would mess up and try to blame others for their mistakes. They try to convince you that you guys are a team or family but at the end of the day, they even said it themselves, they’ll do anything to protect themselves and their position. 

Barely any team building activities. Maybe quarterly but everyone was more focused on meeting deadlines. They won’t explicitly tell you but they sort of expect you to work from home on the weekends if you can’t meet the deadlines. They did ridiculous write ups. Overall, just very toxic. It strained my mental health working here for years. I had such a bad burnout, I had to take a few months break to recover. I felt like I couldn’t speak up either because I felt like I was a bother to everyone if I brought up my struggles. There was this constant expectation of we needed to do our work and not complain. They (upper management)  said it was ok to speak with them but it didn’t feel ok. When speaking to them, they would brush off the concerns or say “this is part of the job”. 

For some people, you can tell they lost the passion for social work and were more concerned about numbers. 

There were some lovely people there who I’m happy I got to meet and work with. The pay is great too. They pay better than most organizations. The message of the company is something I value too. However, the structure and expectation of everything is too much for one caseworker to deal with. 

Eventually patience just runs thin. There’s never any staff for additional support because understaffing is extreme (does HR not know how to hire?), you can be out sick for a few days and no one will think to touch your work despite you notifying the appropriate parties of where support is needed in your absence, it’s like you’re constantly pushing through a daily battle. You ask for help and it’ll take 5-7 business days but the moment others need help they expect you to drop everything and get it done asap. The problem is never the kids - it’s what we sign up for. It’s the poor work environment, lack of care from upper management for their employees, and looming guilt for not getting things done because you’re burnt out and being told “schedule it for a later date” instead of actually getting help. Don’t even get me started about the pay. A group of people doing the EXACT same work gets paid entirely different - and yes, I’m well aware of qualifications making the difference so guess what - that’s not causing an impact. If you’ve been an employee here and just switch departments you automatically receive hiring ranking and pay regardless of the position. Oh and covid? A joke. An entire year later and this company still doesn’t know how to promptly tend to their sick employees yet still require us to be out and about in the community doing everything to a T. It’ll take 5-7 business days and then some for HR to even look at your emails regarding covid, and at that you won’t even receive your covid relief pay according to the appropriate pay roll it should’ve landed on. When do I get to stop writing about this? I guess when they stop thinking I’ll stick around for a work culture restructuring - there’s been zero changes since I started here. #nothappening. 

Sincerely, 
Over worked, underpaid, underappreciated & must get out asap. 

A typical day is home visits to clients, plus maybe a meeting a couple times a week with staff/supervisors.

I learned about MST family therapy, and how to do family therapy with youth offenders and their families.

A plus is that the agency offers pretty extensive training.

Management is pretty darn bad.  Abusive, insensitive and vindictive at times.  No union, so favoritism is the rule of the day.  Don't expect to be treated fairly or with professionalism.  

You may luck out and get a good supervisor, but upper management is horrendous.

The agency culture is pretty insensitive too. 
At the agency "holiday party", workers were given a gift bag to take home.  Guess what was inside?  Christmas ornaments!  (talk about not politically correct...has this social service NYC agency not gotten the memo that not every New Yorker is Christian or celebrates Christmas?  It would be laughable if it wasn't so disheartening.)

Hardest part of the job was dealing with management, and home visits can be difficult at times, depending on the families.

Most enjoyable part of the job is that you can to some extent set a flexible schedule for yourself, which is nice.  (schedule home visits as is convenient for you and the families you work with).

Compensation wasn't terrible, about average for someone with a degree - not great.

Job Work/Life Balance isn't great because you are doing home visits to all your clients, all over the city, plus attending meetings for the agency.
Of course the flexible schedule, again, is a plus for work/life balance though.

HR is quick to dismiss their emoloyees.  They claim to care about their clients but it is the good employees who are making  them look good.  The good employees are usually the ones who they are quick to let go.   You are not able to discuss how things can be better or speak on tbeir inconsistencies or you will be terminated.  The VP of HR does not allow the emoloyees to stand up for themselves.  She signs termination papers as much as she wipes her backside.  It is a terrible place to work if you care about your clients because they don't recognize your efforts.  Its all about funding and the political aspects and not about the Families in which they are hired to help.  Many children suffer from their incompetent Management style that CV possesses.  I think that ACS should investigate this organization before they ruin more innocent lives.  If you want to work in Social Services I reccommend that you look at another Organization,because this one is being Governed by egotistical self-centered induviduals.  CV offers  low pay no team spirit and will not allow you to feel fulfillment at the end of the day.

There was a lot more social work involved than I was led to believe at hiring. If you don't see a youth, you have to track them down at school/work/community, and if you miss a session because a family cancels or no-shows, you're required to reschedule later in the week on top of the other 8-10 families you have to see on a weekly basis. There was no work/life balance, no compensation for overtime due to being salary (and you frequently worked overtime), very little support from the supervisor, and an unrealistic expectation when it came to timely documentation and crisis management. I loved the families that I worked with and serviced, but the company became more focused on numbers and model adherence  instead of supporting the family's and employee's needs. Their response to COVID-19 showed their lack of care for employee's and families health and safety, and they merged large offices from different boroughs into one office in the midst of a pandemic, so people went from having their own clean desk to sharing desks with multiple people, no desk assignments, and overcrowding office space limitations, thereby risking health and safety. My co-workers were fantastic as were other team members!

•	Coordinated intake interviews and assessed suitability for child placement 
•	Assisted parents, prospective parents and caregivers requesting placement services and provided them with community based information
•	Assessed service needs and established service plans for children and families
•	Provided clinical interventions, case work counseling, prepared safety assessments, implemented behavioral plans, supervised sibling and family visits and conducted assessment of integration of newly learned skills in parenting and mother/child interaction
•	Designed, implemented and evaluated treatment plans
•	Assisted residents between 5-21 years and caregivers with a variety of significant mental health and behavioral challenges to promote safety, wellbeing and permanency
•	Connected families to community based, mediation and advocacy services to address initial reason for placement 
•	Collaborated with teachers regarding student and family needs, offering ideas and techniques to foster positive social/emotional development for students
•	Monitored all aspects of child wellbeing and safety, family functioning and dynamic in the home
•	Prepared progress notes, court, permanency and incident reports 
•	Attended court in permanency hearings, and TPRs

Typical day started with gathering information on residents to email to our contracting agencies and within the company. Once those emails (and responses) were taken care of, next would be following up with any incidences that occured over night. Following up with reports, checking on the facilities and vehicles to ensure all are up to code on all required inspections.

I learned how to multitask my duties; l also learned the importance of knowing all staffs duties (supervisors, directors, social workers) in case I had to perform any of them on short term basis.

Management within the department did as much as they could with the resources we had. Some of my coworkers were great to work with and provided alot of support to each other and the residents.

The hardest part of the job was when residents that were discharged returned to the program or when they ran away from the program. We strived to provide a safe and structured environment for the resident.

The most enjoyable part was when old residents called/sent letters letting us know how they are doing.

As an Assistant teacher i was doing the job of the Head teacher. She was alway gone , to an appointment or somewhere on her phone being loud and boisterous. everyday i was left by myself with up to 12 kids, once 13 because the daycare managed to have 13 kids in a room when there should only be 12 by law. very toxic environment. 
 The kids were great, i loved them. they called on me so much that it was driving me crazy as evem they knew that they could only really rely on me in that room. 
Dont bother with management because its lousy. They director actually tells the lead teacher any and everything u complained about. once she said the lead teacher needed rest because it was stressful. i mean thats what she said in a meeting after i complained that she was out of the room waaay too much. then i complained to the director's boss and that went right over her head. I'd never leave my child at a place like that. 
if you genuinely love children and willing to work through the toxicity then be my guess , you will make the kids have someone to lioking forward to see, and bring some joy to their life.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Youth specialist 18 salaries reported	$25.21 per hour
Case worker 16 salaries reported	$32.70 per hour
Family therapist 7 salaries reported	$69,950 per year
Social worker 16 salaries reported	$72,467 per year
Therapist 3 salaries reported	$71,083 per year

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