Pros
AST is a place where employees can grow and make progress in their careers. My experience has been one of clinical growth, encouragement and appreciation for my efforts has been shown in the form of verbal praise and recognition and increased financial compensation. I can attest to this being true to our interventionists as well. We practice the most essential ABA strategy of delivering reinforcement by providing consistent tangible (monetary, above salaries and pay) reinforcement to interventionist and supervisors that perform to expectation and beyond. I have received 2 raises in 12 months and did not ask for either, I have witnessed upper management seek out interventionist that demonstrated consistency in competencies and deliver pay increases without them asking. AST is a place where I am surrounded by professionals that truly have a passion for helping clients and are driven to provide the best service possible. AST allows me to be part of a team where I can be sharpened by others and also contribute to the sharpening of others. I feel that my opinions and points of view are valued and appreciated, even within our executive team. They are readily available for me to give them feedback through email and quick to respond when I express concerns. I have been in the ABA field for 12 years and with many agencies/ districts and I can honestly say that, although AST is not perfect, they are the best agency that I have worked with. Hands down! AST does not claim to be perfect but does strive to continually provide quality service and meet and exceed the needs and expectations of the families and employees that make up this agency.
Cons
The workload of supervisors is challenging and difficult to manage. But there are options of decreased workloads are available. I recently requested a decreased workload and I am so happy with my job responsibilities and the amount of time I have for my friends and family and the salary is still competitive. Draw backs for interventionist that I have witnessed is instability in service hours delivered, but this is consistent with the nature of the position. As AST is an agency of integrity and only bills for hours of services actually worked, income for interventionist can fluctuate depending on client cancelations and such. AST's schedulers do work very hard to maintain the number of hours interventionist work and are paid for. They are very vigilant in trying to schedule make up when clients cancel and also send interventionist to other clients to maintain interventionist hours. But the nature of the job of an interventionist, any where, is such that stability in billable hours is impossibility to predict or guarantee. I have never known another agency that worked so hard to try to maintain interventionist hours and incomes. All things considered, in this flield, a great place to work!
