FYI, the Institute on Community Integration Staff Newsletter

April 2010

College of Direct Support: Training America’s DSPs, Any Time, Any Place

Direct Support Professionals (DSPs) play a vital role in community living for individuals with disabilities. Without the kinds of assistance DSPs provide, many people with disabilities would be unable to live in homes of their own choosing, be employed in many workplaces, or participate in community social settings. Unfortunately, finding and keeping highly skilled DSPs is one of the greatest challenges in community living for many people with disabilities.

To help meet this challenge, the Institute’s Research and Training Center on Community Living (RTC) partnered with MC Strategies/Elsevier in 2004 to create the College of Direct Support (CDS), a national online training program for DSPs. “Many DSPs get little professional training and development,” says RTC’s Amy Hewitt, who oversees CDS course development. “CDS provides a robust training menu of nationally-validated and expert-reviewed courses for DSPs as well as their managers and supervisors.” RTC director Charlie Lakin notes, “CDS speaks directly to people providing direct support about the importance of their work, the responsibilities and opportunities it provides, and the enormous difference their skillful and committed support can make in the lives of people with disabilities.”

CDS has clearly tapped a need. Since 2004, over 202,000 learners from 29 states and British Columbia have enrolled and completed over 3 million lessons. It currently offers 27 different, on-demand courses, and continues to expand the course list each year. In April alone CDS has introduced three new products:

  • “Film for Thought,” a course that uses a documentary about the lives of two women with disabilities to illustrate curriculum concepts.

  • Gaming reviews that take CDS content and move it onto a gaming format that organizations and DSPs can use for annual training renewal requirements.

  • A new interactive and educational tool using The Riot, a national self-advocate newsletter.

Not only is the standard CDS training menu available to enrolled learners any place, any time, it also has the advantage of being customizable to the needs of particular agencies. “Agencies can add their own video, audio, and handouts to meet their staff needs,” notes the RTC’s Derek Nord, who tracks CDS use.

“CDS has fit nicely into the evolution of our field and of technology,” says Charlie. “When we first began to discuss the potential market for CDS, people with developmental disabilities were receiving residential supports in about 100,000 different settings. Staff were working every conceivable mix of schedule to provide support every hour of every day, week and year. It seemed clear that in this movement toward increasingly dispersed services that the traditional training that brought people together in a classroom just could no longer work. We have in some way been able to ride this wave of change.”

FFI, visit CDS at http://collegeofdirectsupport.com or contact Amy at hewit005@umn.edu or 612-625-1098.