Pros
4 day work schedule Fridays off Benefits 401k
Cons
Caseload heavy. Would work with kids from 7:30am-6pm at night. Was absolutely draining. I only made it 3 months in and didn’t even make it to my full caseload even though I already had close to 60+ kids on my caseload everyday. I would see close to 15-20 kids within a day and it was brutal. Plus notes were due every Sunday by 9am and reports were due the following week as well as turning in any other evals reports or notes by the end of the month. Not to mention they expect you to write 20 notes a day if you saw 20 patients and if you don’t hit productivity it will count against you as a strike and you get 3 chances and then they supposedly boot you if the intervention plan is not working. But also there is no documentation time!!! Like 30 minutes aka your lunch break pretty much. Otherwise you have to complete your notes after work or at home on the weekends with 80+notes to write and no pay or compensation for working on them outside of Ivy during my personal hours. Every time I’d get home I’d be so tired and didn’t want to do my notes cause I just wanted to relax as my notes continued to pile up for rest of the week that is was always just an unending amount of notes as speech sees twice as many patients as ot and pt which is twice the amount of notes. Oh and if a patient cancels they say they save it for doc time aka 30 minutes but 9/10 times they will book you with a make up session and sometimes you happily sit down to take a breather and the receptionist comes in like hey I moved blah blah blah on to your schedule so you’ll be seeing them today oh and there here right now. I just simply did not have the time nor the energy to work in that particular setting for the rest of my life as it truly was exhausting. It took a serious toll on my mental health that I ended up having to step away. Every day I would come home after work and cry from the stress and exhaustion. I had no work life balance as it was nearly impossible working 10+ hour days spending most of my days correcting behavior, getting hit/bit/pinched as the kids constantly tested my limits and to see what they could and couldn’t get away with or do. They will pay you extra if you take on more kids to your caseload if you go over the states legal caseload number but quite frankly you’ll already be drowning with the kids you already have on your caseload so the extra money you get you will most likely never see since you already see such a high amount of kids daily. Also you have to talk to the parents and update them on how the session went every 30 minutes. It’s nearly impossible remembering all that you did within the session when your seeing kids back to back let alone 20 in a day. You will also have parents who are always asking for homework to be sent home and granted that’s great I’m all for the support of a child’s learning and education but when I am seeing clients every minute and I come out to tell you how your kid did and see my next kid sitting there waiting for me or trying to get my attention and the first parents asks for homework…Then you have to take the time right then and there to go look up and print off materials while your next client has to wait. It’s very stressful and another thing that you will also most likely have to do. Parents also sit in on the sessions which not only adds pressure to you trying to do your job but also will have parents who are very harsh and upfront when it comes to the therapy you are providing. I have to also heavily agree that Ivy is one big puppy mill just turning out therapists for low grade pay. They truly heavily focus on how well the company is doing and not on why they have such a high turnover rate and can’t keep slps. When I came on my boss told me we made 130% more just from the month I had started and that was from all the clients and evals they had just thrown onto my schedule each week without giving me a break to just breathe eat my lunch in peace or be a functioning human outside of work.
