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      Father Bill's & MainSpring

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      Father Bill's & MainSpring Reviews

      3.7

      53% would recommend to a friend

      (17 total reviews)
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      John Yazwinski

      66% approve of CEO

      48% positive business outlook

      Father Bill's & MainSpring has an employee rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars, based on 17 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Father Bill's & MainSpring employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Non-profit and NGO industry (3.7 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      17 reviews
      3.0
      28 July 2018

      Admirable ambitions, but all in the wrong order...

      Case manager
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      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.

      3.0
      22 June 2022

      Great mission, poor execution and leadership

      Case manager
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      The pros surrounding what my job involved had to do with autonomy. One is essentially given a population of individuals to case manage, and you are left to figure out through trial and error what works and what doesn't work with regard to stabilizing your population. My job was to case manage a population of all male participants who had once been homeless, but who were provided housing in a permanent environment with others. The biggest task was managing conflict. As a case manager, you are dragged into personality conflicts, as well as wholly legitimate ones. The dynamic ranged from mild complaints about a housemate with bad breath, to criminal activity from a participant that drew law enforcement. There was never a dull moment. This job kept me on my toes, and unless you truly love social work, this job is not for you. You had to be active in your role, connected with your participants, and building relationships no matter the cost. It's a sacrifice, but incredibly rewarding knowing that you have secured disability benefits for someone, or even just provided transportation to and from a doctor's appointment.

      Cons

      Leadership. Leadership- with very few exceptions- are so detached from what's involved in managing individuals with substance use disorders, or a mental illness, it's staggering. They offer no practical training in these areas, and so case managers are left to navigate situations that jeopardize not only their safety and well being, but also jeopardizes relationships that ought to be productive, but instead become stale and ineffective. The only trainings offered mainly consist of CPR, inclusion and diversity stuff, or subjects completely unrelated to the job. Trainings that involve processing applications for SNAP benefits, disability benefits, or how to engage individuals with a variety of mental illnesses, substance use disorders, behavioral problems, and connecting them to services in the community, etc, are non-existent. To most members of leadership, providing housing is the main goal, no matter the impact to communities, neighbors, or even members of case management charged with managing a population of people so afflicted with those conditions mentioned. And this is why turnover is so high. Congregate members of case management are expected to babysit- to sit in an office all day at a congregate home, and present oneself as some force of authority in order to deter participants from behaving badly in a manner that affects others in the congregate home, neighborhood, or community. Sadly, the agency doesn't provide the tools for case management to perform such a task. Such tools don't actually exist. And when case managers realize this, and find themselves with the epiphany that they are with a futile job in the absence of tools that don't exist, they leave. The bottom line for leadership is revenue. Father Bill's, at its core, is a business. And there is money to be made in providing housing to those who are homeless. This is the lens they look through, unfortunately. Assisting case managers with proper training, practical solutions to challenges, etc, is not their priority.

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      ReviewsFather Bill's & MainSpring reviews

      Glassdoor has 18 Father Bill's & MainSpring reviews submitted anonymously by Father Bill's & MainSpring employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Father Bill's & MainSpring is right for you.