National Direct Support Professional Recognition Week – 2024 Let’s Discuss Long-Term Solutions

by Joseph Macbeth | Sep 11, 2024 | News

National Direct Support Professional Recognition Week – 2024

Let’s Discuss Long-Term Solutions

Joseph M. Macbeth, President and CEO

As another National Direct Support Professional Recognition Week begins, we watch with deep appreciation all the creative ways supervisors, administrative teams, families, and advocates show their gratitude to our direct support workforce – after all, it’s been said many times that direct support professionals are the “backbone of this system”. As true as that statement may be and despite three years of financial infusion from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), our backbone remains tired, tense, and fractured. I’d like to take this opportunity to use National Direct Support Professional Recognition Week to have a frank discussion about the state of the direct support workforce.

As we know too well, the instability of the direct support workforce is not a new issue across disability service systems. Supporting people well in community-based settings requires a robust, stable, and competent direct support workforce. Since the pandemic, the plight of the caregiving infrastructure has received high-level attention across state and federal government. Yet, direct support professionals are struggling now more than ever. We repeatedly hear feedback that they feel like a rubber band that’s being stretched as far as it can go and the band is about to snap.

At a time when the demand for direct support is at a critical peak, we need more than temporary funding to effect true, systemic change. The growing demand, combined with an unprepared workforce struggling with increased expectations and requirements is putting people with disabilities at significant risk. Short-term strategies to address the workforce issues have only yielded modest gains. Short-term approaches will not adequately address rampant turnover, the need to pay living wages, or allow us to compete with other industries that offer comparable wages and less responsibility. We need long-term solutions.

After everything that has happened during the pandemic, and the praise heaped upon “our direct support heroes”, the continued failure to invest in the long-term strategies will be seen by direct support professionals as just more empty rhetoric – and they will not be wrong.

So, what can we do about it? We can start by getting direct support professionals engaged in their own advocacy efforts. We’ve relied on others to do it for us for far too long with no real gains. Earlier this year, the NADSP hosted our third National Advocacy Symposium where hundreds of direct support professionals from across the country met virtually with their congressional leaders and senators. For the third year in a row, our highest policy priority was to advocate with legislators to support the bill that would require the Office of Management and Budget to consider establishing a separate category within the Standard Occupational Classification system for direct support professionals during their typical review processes.

I’m happy to share that our efforts helped push the Recognizing the Role of Direct Support Professionals Act through the US Senate and should be passed by the House shortly. Beyond that, the Office of Management and Budget also opened public comments for new occupational classifications, and we estimate that more than 10,000 direct support professionals submitted comments!

Today, we wish you a very happy National Direct Support Professional Recognition Week. We hope that you find exciting ways to recognize and celebrate the direct support workforce. Enjoy the week because the following week we will begin to engage, inform, and prepare direct support professionals in their own advocacy responsibilities. Next spring, we’ll be hosting another National Advocacy Symposium, and we hope that direct support professionals from every congressional district will join us. If we’re successful, we’ll have a real cause to celebrate National Direct Support Professional Recognition Week in 2025.