Pros
Love the culture of support and respect, free lunch and dinner on the job. Loved being able to transport clients and spend time with them in their homes (whatever that may look like for them) and cultivate relationships. The therapeutic relationships are less structured than your average social work job, so you can really meet the clients where they are and support them in dynamic and creative ways. Very strong on harm reduction and housing first. Also a lot of opportunities to advance without a Master's Degree, which is a rarity in this field. Lots of opportunities for overtime if desired.
Cons
A previous reviewer said there are annual raises and Christmas bonuses, but that must be at least 3 years old, because for the past 3 years they gave the, "We're investing our funding into ending homelessness so unfortunately there will be no raises or bonuses" speech at the department meetings. In all social services jobs, you will find employees who are co-dependent and struggling with their own mental health and addiction recovery, but I found in this job, the numbers of employees struggling was uncommonly high. I also found many co-workers developed gambling problems on top of their pre-existing struggles which they often attributed to the high stress and low pay combination. I found that co-dependence was often seen as compassion, teamwork, etc. and often rewarded, and that as the agency grew rapidly in size, it seemed to outgrow its own competencies and the quality of service decreased alarmingly. I also found that people could easily slip out of trouble with managers by playing to their heartstrings, and that long-term issues often went uncorrected as a result. When things would start to come unglued in a given department, they had a couple of managers that were real Marge-in-Charge characters that they would shuffle around the agency to clean up other managers' messes. The turnover rate was really high and it's not uncommon to have a lamb manager one year and a lion the next.