Pros
I was excited when I started working at Renew Consulting. I had experienced burn out while working at a different company due to petty backstabbing and poor chemistry which fractured the support team. When I started at Renew, I was placed with a home that had a great staff, and it felt like a positive change. I would have rated it 4 - 5 stars back then. I love the clients that I supported. One of the clients had only been there a week when I started working at the program. He was constantly depressed and made threats frequently about how he would hurt staff and other clients. I remember vividly the day that he cracked a smile at one of my jokes. Eventually he even began initiating jokes with me. The reward is exponential when working with difficult behaviors and observing breakthrough moments. Having those awesome moments with people, who are facing difficult life circumstances, is why I am in this field in the first place.
Cons
Within my first year there, the program manager was pulled into a different home, which, at the time, required more attention than the the one where I worked. Instead of looking for a replacement manager, the administration praised us for being such a great team. They thought that we could hold ourselves together and could manage ourselves. Well, as you can probably guess, after more than half a year, with no active manager, things began to slowly unravel. On paper, the guy who was pulled to the other program was still our manager. In reality, he was MIA. There was no accountability. The clients began to suffer. One of the clients was wheelchair bound. We were supposed to be encouraging him to walk twice a day. This started happening less and less. Staff that I worked with started coming up with games to see who would get stuck helping the clients out. Some of the staff started talking down to the clients and becoming 'enforcers' of house policies. I stuck with the job for around 2 years, until it became such a terrible working environment, that I could no longer buy into the house philosophy. Pro-active strategy had been all but abandoned for a reactive based, enforcement attitude. Behaviors escalated, and the spirit of the whole team went from light hearted and supportive to very heavy and pointing fingers. We had lost touch. There was no program manager around to hold us accountable. In talking to many other certified support providers, this did not appear to be an isolated problem. In fact, there are many houses, that 'share' the same manager. Other CSP's that I spoke with had the same feelings that I felt. Upper management was grossly out of touch with what goes on in their homes. I have to say that there are some in the administration that I feel are approachable. There is overall, however, a feeling of distance I have when visiting the main office. It is not unlike an us and them sort of feeling that comes over me. This is reinforced with company wide policies directed at CSP's in response to isolated indiscretions. In fact, my biggest problem with Renew Consulting is that it doesn't seem like program managers are really allowed to have much voice. It seems like the management structure is a very top heavy trickle down scheme, and by the time that it reaches the individual programs, it is often so convoluted and irrelevant that it becomes ridiculous. The above cons, all have a very direct affect on the service that the clients receive. Indirectly, the way a company treats it's employees, has a positive or negative affect on it's clients as well. One of the biggest ways Renew Consulting lets it's CSP's down is in the area of evaluations and raises, which are promised yearly, but all too often do not happen. In some cases, CSP's have gone over 2 years without hearing any feedback, which means, more than 2 years without a raise. Program managers are allowed to get to evaluations on their own time, and some, apparently, never do. In my case, it was a little late, but the ridiculous thing about my first evaluation, is that it was completely fictionalized. It was favorable, but the funny and pathetic thing about it was that, since the program manager was MIA and therefore unable to accurately praise me or offer constructive criticism, it was like reading a comic book. I remember laughing as I was reading it and pointing out how, "It sounds good and all, but I never did half of the things that you give me credit for." He just shrugged and had me sign it. My point is that if people are not held to a high standard, and if management does not also hold themselves to the same high standard, things will come unraveled. It is the law of entropy. Quality requires maintenance. Also, it is worth mentioning that I have never seen a worse health insurance package. The deductible was $3000.00 if I remember correctly. Please, just dig a hole in the ground somewhere, and shoot me.
