Difficulties in finding, keeping, and ensuring the competence of the direct support workforce in community developmental disability services has long been a challenge for individuals, families, providers, and policy makers. Direct support staff recruitment, retention, and competence are widely reported as one of the most significant barriers to…

This paper describes the development of the National Skill Standards for Community Based Human Service Practitioners and reports on a survey of states' training and certification requirements. The standards are grouped into 12 broad competency areas: (1) participant empowerment; (2) communication; (3) assessment; (4) community and service…

This toolkit contains a program coordinator guide, facilitator guide, and learner guide for launching the Peer Empowerment Program (PEP), a mentoring program for direct support personnel in community-based human service organizations. The toolkit provides advice on how to select, train, and sustain mentors, as well as instructions for preparing…

This curriculum was designed to teach frontline supervisors of community-based services and programs that provide supports to persons with developmental disabilities. The curriculum is based on a set of identified competencies for frontline supervisors and the findings of a series of focus groups that were conducted by the Institute on Community…

This curriculum was developed to train the frontline supervisors (FLS) in human service agencies to become active in their organizations and at their individual sites in the recruitment, retention, and training of direct support professionals. It is based on research-based competencies for frontline supervisors that were developed following a…