Direct Support Workers Launch New NADSP Affiliate

Shannon Gilbert

It’s official! The Direct Support Professionals of Indiana, better known as DSPIN, is the newest affiliate of the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals (NADSP).

We submitted our contract agreement to NADSP on August 17. Before long, we were on their website, listed as one of their state affiliates.

But there was a lot of work to do before that happened, and there’s a lot more to be done.

I told you about our first meeting, where we had a kind of informal focus group, talking to the direct support workers and others who showed up about potential obstacles to setting up a state association and ways to get around them.

At our next meeting, we came up with our name and our first board of directors. I got elected president – I tried to give it to someone else, but they all said “No, you have to do it; you’re the one with the idea and all the information.” After that, people stepped up to fill in the slots and do what needed to be done.

There are 10 board members, and they’re all direct support professionals from around the state. I’ve never met any of them before they showed up for our meetings. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of the agencies some of them work for. That’s how distant we DSPs are from each other, most of the time. The more we work together on this, the more we share our stories and realize how much we have in common. It’s a really good peer group connection.

We’ve created our mission statement:

DSPIN’s mission is to support empowered lives for ourselves and those we serve through education, self-awareness and collaborative action.
D-Dedication
S-Support
P-Professionalism
I-Integrity
N-Networking

We’ve agreed on the first issue we’re going to advocate for: keeping the state-funded certification classes for DSPs.

Indiana got a grant to pay for five college classes on how to do DSP work. At the end of those classes, you get a certificate. You’re supposed to also get a dollar-an-hour raise, which would also be funded by the state. But a lot of DSPs went through the program and then their agencies couldn’t afford the dollar raise. I’m one of the lucky ones: my agency gave me the raise.

We want to advocate for keeping that program after the grant is up next year. We haven’t gotten far enough into it to know what we’ll ask for. We have to get our facts and numbers in order before we go talk to legislators. But we want them to support the classes because we think they’re really important. They allow for professional growth and provide wage incentives. If we’re going to treat direct support like a profession, we need to have more training opportunities, and we need to get wage increases when we do get additional education.

We’ve also been busy introducing ourselves to people and trying to get more members.

Early this month, I went to an ARC board meeting with our vice chair, Dee Quaglio. There were CEOs there from almost every agency in Indiana. We told them who we were, what we do and why, and how they can help. One lady said she went home and researched NADSP and she wants to see how she can support us, because she sees it as an alternative to the union.

And last week, we participated in a poster session for DSP week at the at the Indiana Association of Rehabilitation Facilities (INARF) conference. Dee and I were there with Jennifer Canan, our education chair. We had our mission statement and flyers about the benefits of being a member. We also passed out buttons.

Our message is that we can empower DSPs to be more confident and more aware that their job is important. We’re trying to promote the profession of DSPs.

I look forward to keeping you informed as we progress.

Related Resources

Launching a Direct-Care Workers Association: First Steps (PDF)

Shannon Gilbert, DSP