But I’m licensed!

So the recession is officially making its way into San Francisco community mental health. Once receiving my professional license, I figured that employment would be easy to find and secure, while developing my private practice on the side.

As a result, I’ve exercised patience over the past few months in seeking employment, waiting for the employer that felt like a good match to come my way in combination of population of clients, professionalism of the organization and of course salary. Because of this, I’ve stuck with my current employer, Walden House, despite it being time to move on, because I have been there for many years, know how things run and enjoy working with my clients.

However, the economic downturn has made its way into San Francisco’s Department of Public health as both the city and California fear huge annual deficits for the year. The SF-DPH will be cutting $26.7M, with over $.5M of those cuts affecting Walden House.

So I’m out of a job come January 1, 2009, after all of this time expecting things to be easy once I reached this stage of my career. Goes to show that you never know. I’m searching far and wide and am less picky than I have been for the past few months. We’ll see what comes my way. Hopefully my license can open up a few doors for me in these challenging times.