My experience with Kenneth Young Center was overwhelmingly negative due to its toxic work culture, lack of leadership, and complete disregard for employee well-being. While I entered the organization with the hope of making a difference, I quickly realized that management prioritizes agency optics over both staff and client needs.
Lack of Leadership & Toxic Culture
Management is untrained, unqualified, and unprofessional, creating an environment of micromanagement, retaliation, and favoritism. Instead of fostering growth and supporting employees, leadership relies on excessive write-ups and punitive measures to control staff. Communication is poor, and major decisions—like layoffs and policy changes—are made abruptly with no transparency. Employees are constantly left in the dark, scrambling to adapt to unclear expectations.
Overworked & Undervalued
Workloads are unrealistic, with employees expected to take on more responsibilities than is reasonable. Boundaries are not respected, and the expectation to work long hours, answer messages after hours, and sacrifice personal time is normalized. Despite these demands, raises and career advancement opportunities are nonexistent. Hardworking employees are denied fair pay increases while being expected to do more, and when raises are requested, they are ignored or dismissed.
No Career Growth & High Turnover
There is no real opportunity for professional growth, and employees are often strung along with false promises of advancement. Promotions are based on favoritism rather than merit, and those who question leadership or advocate for themselves are pushed out. Turnover is extremely high, with talented employees leaving due to burnout, mistreatment, or lack of job security. The agency has even resorted to layoffs, proving its instability.
Self-Care is Not a Priority
While the agency preaches self-care, the reality is the complete opposite. Employees are expected to push through exhaustion, and when they bring up concerns, they are dismissed or retaliated against. HR exists solely to protect management, not to support staff. Any attempt to raise issues results in being ignored, gaslit, or even written up.
Final Thoughts
Kenneth Young Center is an unstable, toxic workplace that does not value its employees. If you care about your well-being, career growth, or work-life balance, avoid this organization at all costs. The best decision I made was leaving.
I can only speak about one part of the organization which is the Front Door Program. It is being ran by disorganized and selfish people who only care about their own personal life then putting the clients first. Clients are given vouchers as forms of rental payments and it is extremely difficult to find apartments that accept the vouchers. One apartment complex was one that a supervisor, Sherri, lived in and she ordered all housing personnel not to move any homeless clients into her apartment complex. I had already moved one into her complex and she said that was okay but not anymore. I informed her that she couldn't really do that and she didn't care. She also arranged to have meetings with the entire group, once a month and pay for food instead of spending the money on the clients like they should. I reported her to her supervisor about forbidding homeless clients from moving into her apartment complex and she told me that she was going to get me fired. She continued with telling everyone not to move anyone in the complex and the group was afraid to complain about her misusing funds, time, disrespecting people in the group and constantly berated and threatening to fire people for reporting her for misappropriation of laws and funds. Even her supervisor Courtney didn't care how she treated everyone and abused the laws like refusing to allow homeless people to move into an apartment that accepts the voucher but she doesn't want anyone living by her. Then she had clients complain about her smoking in their presence which is also illegal in Illinois. Harassing subordinates and co-workers which is why now Kenneth Young Center has an active investigation against them from the Illinois Attorney General. It's sad that they ignored these horrible people who work there, abuse workers and misuse funds. They don't deserve another cent from anyone.
