Pros
Very rewarding experience. You get experience working with children who are very disturbing which can prepare you for another job in another field dealing with children or people period.
Cons
I want to keep in 100% real because they don't. It's all false advertisement because if they were honest people probably wouldn't apply. Any position that's in residential STAY AWAY. They give you the title "Behavior Youth Counselor" which I'll admit looks good on your resume but trust me when I say you are far from a counselor. You're a baby sitter! Your primary job is to watch the kids and keep them safe or in better words keep them from killing each other. Mess around and work with the small group of kids and you're pretty much their mother. You have to do almost everything for them. Make sure they take a shower, get their medication, clean up after them. You have to do transports sometimes up to 6 hours away. The hours are demanding, the pay sucks; probably would be better if we weren't on salary and got overtime considering we work up to 60 hrs a week. They tell you upfront that you either work a Sunday-Wednesday shift or a Wednesday-Saturday shift and either Sunday or Saturday will be your 16 hour shift. What they don't tell you is that depending on what campus you work at you will have to do overnights, come in at 2pm not 2:30 and do preshift and on Wednesday you have to come in at 11 for like 3 hours of unnecessary meetings which make Wednesday a 12 hour shift. The children are horrible and there isn't really much help that Youth Villages can do for them besides give them a bed to sleep on and food on the table. I've seen plenty of kids come back after finishing "treatment". I've also seen some kids improve so it's somewhat beneficial for the smaller kids who still have hope. The kids will eat you alive if you're the passive type. I've seen staff get beat up and seriously injured because of the kids trying to fight them or even when restraining them. The kids are manipulative and very disrespectful, some are potentially dangerous and should be at a REAL treatment facility or even juvenile detention. Management is a joke, you better hope you get lucky and get someone who is supportive because then you're left to dry and thrown under the bus. Supervisors are incompetent because all they do is fill in positions because the turnover rate is so high. The company shows favortism and is very unprofessional. Youth Villages is a joke, they are money hungry, it's all about the money to them not helping the kids. They don't care about the kids or value their staff.