Calgary Drop In Centre

It was three years ago that I worked at the drop in centre but I am writing my review of it now. I worked there for one year. The nature of the job is chaotic due to the clients mental health and working with homeless people with acute ailments and severe mental health and addiction problems can be a mental toll. But that’s just the clients. The job itself is fast paced since you are always responding to medical emergencies but the team was collaborative and the managers were supportive. They have team meetings every day to discuss daily issues so that problems get dealt with. I ended up personally having a bad experience just because after one year of working there they randomly fired me for no reason and claimed it was due to “agency changes” and “had nothing to do with me” which I don’t know if that was true or not. I think I might have been fired just because somebody gossiped something about me that was untrue. They were hiring on indeed right after they fired me. That’s the only reason I clicked “no” when indeed asked me if I approve of the CEO. I don’t know anything about her. I’m just unhappy that I was able to randomly get fired for nothing or possibly just due to inaccurate gossip. It isn’t a bad place to work though in terms of management and team unity. 

If hired don’t feel special; they hire anyone. They do mass hiring of relief workers but don’t give them hours or benefits. They treat clients horribly and recently they hired a security company to do what their hired staff was hired to do ... the priority was not care and kindness but security ! Security staff are misogynistic, racist and yet were supervising long term DI staff.. One staff member is being kept on because she stabbed other staff to go ahead 
They hired many adult care workers for six months contracts and laid them all off w/ in two months ! HR are horrible ... they transferred a tech guy to do HR ... he took away two shifts from someone because they hired new staff and gave it to them ! Many staff are horrible ... i worked for a supervisor in afternoons and she never introduced herself! herself !

Total chaos with continuing changes and poor communication. The cause is good and working with the people is rewarding but management seems completely out of touch with the staff and their challenges. If you have personal problems, you may be encouraged to discuss them but this is not a good idea as was my experience.

I watched many long-term employees be laid off (fired) or quit due to complete lack of appreciation from higher management. Their choice in who to promote shows a lack of insight into what is actually happening in the day to day operations of the front line workers....and it can be dangerous, with staff shortages always being an issue.

It appeared they were trying to rectify the poor communication but that led to even more staff being fired and once again, it appeared to be a bad idea to express your true opinions there.

Most clients and staff are very friendly and easy to work with.  

Can be a violent and stressful work environment - more so than any other place i've worked. No real plan to protect people and remove violent clients permanently. Clients happiness seems more important than the safety of people and the facility. Management quickly squelches anyone who speaks up and questions policy.

Very dirty facility. "The DI Bug" is a joke staff tell you after you're hired - expect to be sick off and on for months during your first year...

It was great at the beginning, and I met a lot of amazing people I really did.  However, I find through out my experience there that you will get told of lot of things you want to hear. But whenever it comes time for the action to follow suit with the words.... it doesn't. This is the perfect employment to follow the saying, "If its not on paper...it doesn't exist" 

The over all culture and personality of this place is really good, and there are a lot of caring people. They do have lots of fun activities happening quite often between staff.

What is the best part of working at the company?
I enjoyed working with all the different clients and helping each and every one to leave with new items for their fresh start in their new homes.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
When clients became particular and made a scene in order to get special treatment.

The IT department was a great place to work. The IT director has a great vision and experience for modernizing the infrastructure which made working fun. There were a lot interesting and challenges to work on.
Work/Life balance is great.

Although this was only a volunteering position, I found the environment as very positive, and I felt like I was really helping people out. This job included serving food to the homeless, preparing the food to serve, and cleaning up afterwards.

I learnt about that many and varied cultures of the clients served. It was a humbling experience to realize how quickly life can change so much so, that one becomes homeless. I learnt to be thankful and mindful of my fellow men.

Not a conducive workplace, no training done nor good leadership or management.
There was no direction as far as personnel in how training is ever done.

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