Letter to the Editor: Direct Support Professionals – The Unheralded Essentials

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Life Enrichment Advancing People d.b.a. LEAP, Inc is a 501(c)3 nonprofit charitable organization whose mission is dedicated to helping adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities achieve what we all want – a fair shake at life and community inclusion. We do this by helping people identify needs such as medical, language and hygiene, or wants such as making friends, attending events or visiting family. Once identified, they become goals that people receive coaching, guidance and direct assistance to achieve.

While LEAP exists as an organization to provide structure for these things to happen, the implementation of these supports falls to a little-known group of essential workers known as Direct Support Professional, or DSPs. Once employed as a DSP, LEAP provides many professional trainings including medication administration, CPR/FA, behavior management and other vital trainings including blood born pathogens, where they learn about disease transmission and personal protective equipment.

As you might imagine, COVID-19 has presented a challenge to LEAP as an organization. Running multiple congregate living settings with 24-hour staffing and high-risk clientele presents challenges that we have needed to meet head on. While management of the organization acted early to provide training and resources, it is the Direct Support Professionals that show up daily, co-mingling their own homes with the homes of the people they are supporting. As the information and guidance about COVID-19 has grown and changed DSPs have needed to adapt continuously in order to keep their clients safe. They not only bring their training and professionalism to work every day they also bring amazing integrity, dedication and trust in each other. Presently, hundreds of people from our communities work as DSPs. We would like to take this opportunity to honor, appreciate and bring your attention to a category of essential worker that is often overlooked.

Darryl Wood (Executive Director of LEAP)
Lynne Hunter (Chair of the LEAP Board of Directors)

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3 Comments

  1. Yes, many thanks to care providers, and to those who support those care providers. Nobody is an island. We are in this together.

  2. Thank you for this letter. It speaks to the quality of your leadership, that you take time to honor your staff publicly for their extreme dedication and love of the LEAP family members they care for.
    I have had a chance to get to know some of the staff and residents in various community settings over the years and am always profoundly impressed. Each time, I feel the warmth and take it forward into my day.
    If the rest of us would be as accepting, nonjudgmental, and supportive of one another as LEAP people are, the sky would be the limit.

  3. Thank you, all Direct Support Professionals. You are certainly essential and very much appreciated!

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