therapist

WellStone Behavioral Health

If you don’t care about quality care and only care about productivity, this is the place for you. Management is poor and supervision is non existent. Burn out is a guarantee because they don’t allow therapists to have ANY access over the schedules or caseloads( due to the poor decisions of therapists that don’t even work there anymore). Yet, if your productivity is not in range, you can receive  disciplinary action. FMLA, sickness, and situations outside of your control are not valid reasons for not reaching productivity. They do not care about the therapist’s well being, safety, or sanity. Rules, disciplinary actions, and incentives are applied in a biased and unfair manner. You are expected to see every client that is assigned to you regardless of personal biases, concerns, or workload even when it is last minute. Communication is poor yet they expect near perfection from the adult outpatient therapists. Meetings are long and pointless. Supervisors are condescending, impatient, and rude on a good day. They don’t lead by example or know their own policies. Policies and procedures are unclear and unorganized. Supervisors and the executive board will try to talk to you like you’re a child. I’d recommend looking into any other place of employment. The turnover rate is beyond sad. If you MUST work here, I recommend staying no longer than a year. Get the experience for your resume and RUN!!!!

There are different departments and the company is so big with other locations and experiences in each place are different. I worked in places with pretty great managers and also heard terrible things from others with bad managers. I had an overall good experience and the benefits were great and helped make up for the ridiculously low pay. I felt that payroll treated people as pawns in a money-making game, and whoever took the lowest pay offer got the job. Didn't matter if they were good or stayed, just filling a spot for peanuts was fine. If you don't follow the rules they don't fire you, which worked out good for some people I knew. but you gotta show up to work at least.

If you wanna learn alot about addiction and mental illness, insurance, rules, meds, and many different kinds of people quickly this is your place. For me working around the state rules was hard, then add the clients, their demanding families, and lack of self-care time made it 10 times harder and burn out was high for many positions. I was unable to get license supervision while I was there because the one person stayed full. It still beats going to DHR though!

The company offers a pretty consistent work schedule for this position. You will be in a position to help make a difference in the lives of people with various mental health needs. Management takes a hands off approach in engaging with clients on most days as they have their own clients, meetings etc. and expect you to learn the job quickly and work it with little to no supervision pretty much all the time. Meetings to discuss issues, problem solve and establish morale within the office are almost non-existent for this role. Only therapists, managers, medical staff and some higher ups meet regularly. You will find yourself problem solving on your own or making efforts to and then getting push back about it as it may not be acceptable by the higher ups (CEO, etc.) and it is then presented as if they have to approve everything even though they themselves are highly disengaged with the staff and the work that they do. Biggest plus is knowing that at the end of the day YOU helped someone.

Wellstone tries to project a "caring, committed, can do" attitude, but they are more of a "I don't care DO DO DO", #s and $ hungry company. The executive team and leadership only looks at numbers and could care less about the employees under them or the client's they serve. The facilities and work conditions are below par. The compensation is also far below comparable positions at other companies. No one works here for the money.  With that being said there are some positive take aways... It is a great place to gain clinical experience as they offer free trainings toward continued education credits, and there are a few solid apples among the bunch. 

The work is very stressful with very low salary; Current CEO doesn't care about the staff (except for a select few-his favorites) & he is more about his "status".  Since CEO was promoted in 2017, we have lost several key valuable employees both in Huntsville and Cullman, client care has diminished.  Many times, when people have left, they aren't replaced so we have to work more with less.  God forbid you get on his "bad" side, or he really doesn't care for you...you will be thrown out like trash.  I have seen this with really good employees...he or upper management will push them out. I have worked there on two occasions under two different CEOs this last one was it, will not ever go back.

Wellstone’s upper management and HR don’t care about their employees and therefore do not care about their clients. Pay raises are not a thing at Wellstone and what makes it worse is that they will inform you of an upcoming raise and then never follow through with it and then turn around and act like you are an inconvenience for asking for following up on your promised raise. This place is a revolving door and the clients suffer because of it. Therapists are made to sign a ridiculous contract to obtain clinical supervision through the company and they will tell you that supervision is free during your interview (it’s not unless you want to dedicate years of your life to this place). If you are a therapist looking for a place to advance your career, apply elsewhere. 

For the most part, I enjoyed working as a nurse at Wellstone. I worked at the Wellstar facility. I felt management was very fair and respectful and did give opportunities to advance. The reason why I left was that the environment was too hostile for my stress level. Sometimes the clients could get violent and the staff would have to CPI hold them down for injections. I did not like the feeling of never knowing when someone was going to go off and become violent with the staff or another client. If you can handle that type of environment or are used to it, I feel that this is a nice place to work with a lot of autonomy. It is definitely a team effort and I appreciated all who I worked with.

This place does not care at all
About their patients or employees and don’t even attempt to hide it. They are quick to let you know you are disposable. There are never any raises, bonuses, advancements, or opportunities to “move up” in the company. Several of the employees are actively using drugs and when brought to the attention of Human Resources... you are ignored. The nurses laugh at patients when they are struggling and call for help. I haven’t seen the nurse throw messages from patients in the shred bin. Once again.... Human Resources is aware and clearly they just don’t care. It is really sad because the patients need so much help but the staff ignores them 

Excessive caseload size cripples quality of care. Good co-workers but some unfair policies implemented by upper management. Pay docked for not reaching productivity goal despite the fact that a therapist can't control whether clients become sick, forget appointments, have no transportation, have an ill family member, or do not have the money to pay their co-pay and therefore must miss appointments. Benefits have been reduced over the last few years. The cost for family coverage health insurance was more than a car payment.

The camaraderie between colleagues is the best part of this company. Most people are very willing to help, answer questions, and provide support. However, in my experience, workers are expected to wear several hats and meet unrealistic goals without the tools to follow through on those expectations. Productivity is treated as central, and the goal oftentimes felt unrealistic and unattainable. The administration/executives is where most issues arose; they were unwelcome to feedback and basic communication from workers when the program was struggling. 

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