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Developmental disability agency halves turnover.

“In the field of disability services turnover is last Tuesday!” – Dave Hingsburger

 

Nationally, turnover is actually at almost 50%. Here is what Direct Support Staff want:

 

Here is how one agency is working to change things:

 

Penn-Mar Human Services was founded in 1981 and serves over 400 people with locations in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Penn-Mar approached Open Future Learning as a means to engage their staff in the National Alliance of Direct Support Professionals (NADSP) credentialing program.

 

The first step on the NADSP career ladder program is to become certified as a Direct Support Professional level 1. This requires 50 hours of accredited training. So far over 50 staff have now graduated through this program, and for those graduates, turnover has reduced from 34% to just 16%.

 

Meet Natalie and learn how she is using Open Future Learning to become certified:

 

 

Outside of the NADSP credentialing program all staff are required to complete 24 hours of training per year. Using the flexibility of the Open Future resource, Penn-Mar’s users complete modules on their own and also in group settings. Previously these group style meetings took place in person, but now learners watch the modules as a group over zoom.

 

All staff are required to complete a set list of modules. Penn-Mar’s director of learning and development Gina Brelesky identified the ‘Personal and Intimate Care’ training as one of the most important and impactful modules that her staff complete. Here is the trailer for that module:

After completing their required training Direct Support Staff meet with their supervisor to review their learning and discuss how they can apply what they have learned to their practice. Professional development on it’s own is not enough. Staff need to demonstrate how they are using what they have learned to impact the lives of the people they support.

 

To learn more about how you can help your staff to become credentialed, email hello@openfuturelearning.org for a demo and a free trial of the Open Future resource.

No contracts. Ever.

 

 

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Not Friends, Not Family

We are not friends, we are not family.

 

No punches pulled – just the truth. Our interactive Mini Module ‘Boundaries, Paid Friends’ is four pages long and takes just 20 minutes to complete.

 

Your staff will learn that they can have a caring and friendly relationship with the people they support without blurring the boundaries. This excerpt might be hard for some disability support workers to watch:

 

About Mini Learning Modules:
– 30 minutes or less to complete.
– Access them on any device.
– Use them with groups of staff in person or remotely.
– Over 90 mini modules to choose from.

 

Take a 20 min GoToMeeting demo of our site and your company can have 30 days of access to our entire resource – no contract. Email hello@openfuturelearning.org for more information.

 

Learn more about all of our modules here.

 

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At the end

 

Providing end-of-life care is a privilege that is hard to choose. It is to choose to go down into the dark with another person, down into the deepest mysteries of the human experience. It is to share in the most difficult journey of a person’s life, a journey from which only one of you will return.

A palliative diagnosis can mean that the person is sent from their home and everything they knew, to finish their journey among strangers. Sometimes this is a relief to those left behind. It is hard to watch someone die, and it is not part of the job description. It is far too mysterious, too intimate, too life-changing, too precious. It is a hard thing to choose.

But for those who can choose it, for those willing to learn how to apply the fentanyl patches and manage the morphine drips, to move a person hourly to prevent bed sores, to change their catheter bags. This is no added burden to an already heavy load, but an honor they wouldn’t miss. They see it as finishing well, a privilege they won’t share with a stranger. It brings much-needed closure to a relationship of support in some cases decades-long. It is their final act of love.

The decision to take on this last and most difficult work is not a selfless act. Those that have done it know that there are gifts to be received here that no one else can give, and lessons that must be learned that can be learned nowhere else.

At the end of life, the balance of power between the support person and the supported shifts. The people we support finally find the equality they’ve always deserved but have so rarely achieved, and more than equality. The person we support at the end of their life are learning a thing, doing a thing, that we do not know how to do, but some day must. We find ourselves the ones supported. We sit quietly by the hospital bed. We listen and we learn perhaps the most important thing a human has to learn: how to die well.

At the end of their lives, all of those careful systems that have been crafted to teach and support and control those in our care collapse. We are no longer concerned with behavioral support plans or age-appropriate activities or annual planning meetings. The person is finally, truly, at the centre. Their wishes and needs can no longer be paraphrased and ignored. Here at the end we learn what support really is, and we find that we are able to provide it, one human being to another.

 

This is where all our work comes to its final fruition. This is where all the labels drop away, and we meet one another simply as humans, sharing the joy and grief, the gratitude and regret that is the common lot of mortals at their common end.

Learn more about this and all of our modules here.

 

For a free demo and trial please email hello@openfuturelearning.org