March 2024 by Alexis N.
I have worked at ACR Homes for 4 1/2 years now, and there have been a lot of ups and downs. When I first started, part-time direct care professionals (if professionals is even an accurate description given we go through fairly minimal hands-on training) were paid $11.25/hr on weekdays and $13/hr on weekends. Everyone told me that it wasn't enough, but I was planning on going to med school, so I really needed the experience. ACR also offers an internship program in which students can do a project that will influence the residents' lives in some way, and once you complete it, you get a letter of recommendation from the CEO. That was one of the main things that drew me to the company, but now I know that minimal support is offered throughout the internship process, and once the internship is over, they won't ensure that your project will continue on no matter how beneficial it was for the resident. For example, if you did an internship that found that essential oils therapy helped reduce a resident's behaviors, ACR would not make it a priority to implement that therapy into the resident's routine, so they are only offered when staff decide to offer it. Prior to COVID, ACR seemed to care about its quality of staff and staff relations. However, since the pandemic, ACR has allowed below mediocre staff to enter its 40+ homes and care for their vulnerable residents. I understand that during a staffing crisis exceptions must be made, but this trend has continued to this day, even though we are staffed better now than we were even before COVID. There is no excuse at this point why we are still hiring people that clearly do not want to be there and simply don't care. It is hard to say that we value a high quality of care when we allow people to go through their training doing a poor job and still enter the home only to make mistakes that could cost the resident's their lives.
