Predictors of Annual and Early Separations Among Direct Support Professionals: National Core Indicators Staff Stability Survey

Abstract

Direct support professionals (DSPs) provide a broad range of supports in a variety of settings to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) that enables people to live, work, and participate in their communities. Despite the crucial importance in ensuring supports for community participation of people with IDD, high rates of annual turnover among DSPs in organizations that employ them have been documented for decades. This study utilizes National Core Indicators Staff Stability data from 2016 to examine the impact of organizational- and state-level factors related to DSP turnover, including annual DSP turnover and the percentage of DSPs who left their positions after less than 6 months. At the organizational level, a higher turnover rate in the last 12 months was significantly related to lower DSP wages and to not offering health insurance. At the state level, a higher turnover rate in the last 12 months was significantly related to a lower percentage of people living in individualized settings and lower per capita Medicaid spending. For early turnover at the organizational level, a higher percent of leavers within 6 months of tenure was significantly related to not offering paid time off and health insurance, higher vacancy rates, higher proportion of part-time DSPs, and lower overall staff sizes.

Predictors of secondary traumatic stress among intellectual and developmental disabilities workforce: An examination of risk and protective factors.

“…Direct support professionals (DSPs) are often the primary source of support for individuals with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD) and their quality of life and serve as a valuable resource to organizations who provide services to the IDD population (Friedman, 2018; Houseworth et al, 2020; Keesler, 2020). The range of support they provide spans from ensuring individuals’ basic health, safety, and welfare needs; supporting the development of independent living skills; and supporting in-community integration and relationship building goals (Keesler, 2020; Nevill et al, 2022).…”

Community participation and staying home if you want:USadults with intellectual and developmental disabilities

“…A possible explanation for the presence of institutional practices like block treatment in community living settings may be carryover by former institutional staff of previous institutional working methods. However, the very high levels of staff turnover in US services (Houseworth et al, 2020) and the almost three decades since institutions were the major US residential provider (Lakin & Stancliffe, 2007) both suggest that few current community staff formerly worked in institutions. Therefore, it is unlikely that staff had applied to community‐living settings practices they had previously learned in an institution, but instead that block treatment is a persistent feature of the culture of some community‐living settings reflecting the staff‐centred way they currently function (Bigby, Knox, et al, 2012).…”

Is paid sick leave bad for business? A systematic review

“…The most common data sources were the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) 22,[30][31][32][33][34] and Census sources including the Current Population Survey (CPS), 12,26 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 24,35 and American Time Use Survey (ATUS). 15,36 Additional data sources include the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), 27,[37][38][39] National Core Indicators (NCI), 40,41 the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 16,21,42 and The Shift Project. 25,29 Ten other panel data sources were used 16,19,20,26,28,[43][44][45][46][47] along with 12 unique data sets collected independently by the study's authors.…”

“…9,18,23,48,49 Fourteen of the studies included the passage of a state or local mandate as a stimulus for studying associations with PSL. 12,15,16,[19][20][21][23][24][25][26][27][28]35,42 Outcomes were measured in terms of the individual unit of analysis except for eight studies that used the organization 16,23,24,40,41,44,47,48 and seven studies considered the region as the unit of analysis. 12,[19][20][21]26,28,35 The following is a focused discussion of study findings with regard to the specific proximal and distal business variables.…”