Pros
If you are patient, compassionate, adaptive, and communicative, seeing change (even minute change) in client health feels like a monumental accomplishment. I have had the pleasure of working with very kind, very instrumental people. Our benefits package was very good with a reasonable deductible. I only paid about $100 or so out of my paycheck for full dental, vision, and medical. They provide plenty of other benefits and information was readily available.
Cons
The bad actors I have interacted with frequently made me question why I bothered to put in extra effort. One person was always late, left for periods of up to 2 hours (serious), antagonized the clients, neglected basic documentation, and deflected blame onto others when criticized. I endured this person for 3 years, and despite management assuring me that they would handle my and many others' complaints, they acted identically. It was demoralizing to put in genuine effort and be reprimanded when someone who repeatedly shirked the rules was able to keep working. Shameful. Other, prior employees would neglect their duties and allow clients to live in squalor. Expect to work harder if you are a good employee, as coworkers have no accountability with no supervisor present in-house. Coworkers frequently told me about how management attempted to coerce them into putting in more hours. Nobody trusted that management would help when bad things happened. I often had to deal with unpredictable situations on my own. Rarely did I feel like my workplace concerns were taken seriously. Various supervisors would say that they empathized and that things would change, but I never saw it. Scarcely did I feel good about going to work after a point. People always complained and they complained about the same few topics that never saw resolution. Everyone resented management and the bad actor at our house. I don't think anyone actually trusted one another. Communication was pretty bad. I routinely found out about new client information, appointments, dietary changes, schedule changes, and so on secondhand instead of from leadership. For a long time, I was one of the few at my station that regularly communicated house discrepancies. This only improved when new hires came onboard and helped pick up the slack. I learned over time to self-advocate, since communication was lacking, morale was always low, and people were not trustworthy. I could only depend on myself in the end, so I became good at micromamanagement. A shame, because it rarely felt like a team effort.
