Pros
Loved my clients! I had over 130 clients in my time at Kedren, it was an honor to work with all of them. Living in under-resourced and marginalized communities, they faced many layers of societal oppression (poverty, racism, and generational trauma to name a few). They were incredibly gracious, motivated, and kind and I looked forward to working with them daily and supporting them in their healing. Kedren has an overall positive institutional image in the community. Many clients had been referred to Kedren by friends or family who had had good experiences. My clients were grateful for Kedren's role in their lives and healing. My note for management is that this reputation should be respected and used as motivation for Kedren to provide better quality care (weekly therapy, clinically trained and less over-burdened staff). Also loved my co-workers! My team had a great level of camaraderie that helped me through the heavy workload. We had an awesome case manager who worked magic for our clients (she was the most underpaid and overworked of us all). The staff overall were dedicated to the wellbeing of their patients/clients and put their heart into the work. A leader on my team who was not in a clinical supervision role also provided excellent unofficial clinical support and guidance throughout my time there. I also really connected to the security staff and other employees outside of my department. There was a nice communal feeling to the building. They signed off on 40 clinical hours/week (which made sense because we actually worked 40 full hours). But this was a good way to accrue hours quickly (though many of my peers get 40 hours signed off on who work elsewhere with a more manageable workload so remember there are other places that will sign off on 40/week with better working conditions).
Cons
Cons of the therapist position included: low pay, very little PTO, poor management of Covid-19, inadequate supervision, little to no support from management when one of my clients died, incredibly large caseload, and 7.5 hour billing requirement. To expand further, I got paid an hourly rate that amounted to $53k a year whereas the CA state minimum salary that most of my peers in comparable positions were making was $58k (it's now $62,400). My caseload grew to be over 100 clients which meant I had to see most clients every other week or monthly which is not appropriate for trauma work and most of my cases were trauma-based (in another department all therapists saw clients only once a month). In my time there we didn't have access to trainings and Kedren did not make any effort to connect us to DMH-hosted clinical trainings. At best we had 1 hour of group supervision weekly whereas the standard for agencies claiming to provide supervision is 1 hour individual supervision and 2 hours group supervision weekly. This lack of supervision was really difficult because my caseload included many (if not all) complex-trauma cases including diagnoses of PTSD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Schizoaffective Disorder, personality disorders, and Schizophrenia. As a new therapist I really needed supervision to ethically and competently conceptualize these cases, to provide the care my clients deserved, and to support my own well-being as a therapist. There were also 2 months where we had no supervision. While working here one of my clients died of Covid and management did not offer any support. This is a stark contrast to my current agency where therapists are encouraged to take time off, receive emotional-support meetings, and get help in supervision to process such losses. In the nine months I worked there I had only accrued 5 days off by the end and there was a 6-month probationary period before I could take any days off. Kedren handled Covid-19 safety precautions in a questionable manner. Most staff worked fully remotely from March 2020-May 2020. But come May 2020 they brought our teams back to the office on a hybrid schedule (every other day in the office). This was an odd dynamic given the days we worked in the office our work was still fully telehealth and done over the phone. To many of the staff their insistence that we worked from the office before a vaccine was available came across as a decision that needlessly put us at risk. Kedren also did not provide laptops or cell phones for at-home work so we had to incur any additional data costs. And finally... the 7.5 hours/day billing quota. Woof! It's a truly unrealistic expectation that is a one-way road to burnout. I had 7 therapy clients a day 5 days a week. That's 35 clients a week compared to a normal therapy caseload of 20-25 sessions per week. At the end of every day I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. This is a harmful billing expectation and should be reconsidered by management. Most importantly, all of these cons impacted the quality of clinical services we were able to provide to the wonderful clients. I felt deeply saddened that many clients were not receiving ethical trauma-informed care. My clients were incredibly gracious, kind, thoughtful people who were highly motivated to engage in services. They deserved access to weekly therapy sessions and trained therapeutic staff who were not burnt-out. If you're a prospective employee, just know that there are many other nonprofits, DMH contracted agencies, or direct DMH sites that will overwork you less, train you more, and pay a little better.