This Company is Awful - Anonymous employee LifeWorks NW Employee Review

1.0
23 Jan 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Some of the supervising staff I encountered as LWNW moved in to take over the not for profit I had been working at for 7 years were very nice and appeared to personally care about making us feel supported through the transition. Ultimately however the agency wound up doing and implementing a lot of things they had promised us wouldn't come to fruition and in my case specifically I was basically demoted as the LWNW hiring model indicated that my level of education ( two bachelor degrees) did not merit my having a salaried supervisory position despite that fact that, that was the work I had been doing for 7 years AND the fact that other than making me and hourly employee they neither changed my role or even took the word manager out of my title, totally ludicrous! I tendered my resignation within a month of the transition and only ended up working for this nightmare of a company for about 2.5 months total. Most of the folks I worked with lasted only a little longer than I did.

Cons

Where do I start? You get ZERO paid holidays, that's ZERO as in none. The company says that they give ample PTO so that people have extra to cover holidays and also take vacations but the reality is that they don't offer a single hour more of PTO than you would get somewhere that also pays holidays. And the real zinger is that they straight up wont let you work the holiday either, say for instance you say fine I will just work Thanksgiving because I cant afford to take it off...nope their offices are closed that day. Pay, for what they demand of employees in terms of educational background this place is a joke. A LCSW working full time is lucky to earn 45k, to have any chance of advancement at all within their hiring and promoting model you have to have an advance degree even if its a position that you can see in no way should require this. LWNW loves this for their funders and glosses over the fact that they don't pay to commiserate with experience, stress of the job or workload. This agency provides mostly mental health services and only serves those with billable insurance such as OHP, what this meant at my agency at the time they came on board was that we having served a large population of undocumented families didn't have a lot of billable internal referrals to make for their mental health side of things, we were quickly informed that we needed to change our intake practices to make sure we were reaching out to the appropriate population in our community. Maybe the risk factors of the Latino heavy community we were currently serving would be better met by Catholic Charities, IRCO etc.

Explore other reviews about LifeWorks NW

5.0
25 Aug 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

People are passionate about their work.

Cons

The pay is what made me move to new employment.

4.0
18 Apr 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You get to work with a wide variety of children and adolescents who are experiencing various mental health and behavioral health challenges, and you get to do so in a team of other outpatient therapists, clinical supervisors, skills trainers, and psychiatrists. You also get free supervision each week that can be used towards earning your LPC or LMFT licensure in Oregon. There is also an amazing benefits package and fairly fast-accruing PTO. You also develop and improve your clinical skills quickly, and get to figure out your own personal style (so long as you still use evidence-based therapy modalities).

Cons

- There are no caseload caps, requiring therapists to manage an increasing number of clients along with all six-month treatment updates, annual assessments, and safety plans. - Extensive coordination with schools, ODHS Child Welfare, and medical providers is required, significantly reducing available documentation time. - High weekly targets are limited strictly to direct contact hours, making these standards difficult to meet when faced with client no-shows or cancellations. In the child and family therapy population, at least in community mental health agencies like LifeWorks NW, it is very frequent that clients no-show or same-day cancel appointments due to school, work, transportation, illness, or other issues that come up. - These pressures are compounded by current shortages, with only three therapists and rotating interns serving the county where I work.

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