Georgia citizens with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) urgently need your help to ensure continued safe and stable support services! IDD providers are currently facing a crisis of epic proportion in their ability to obtain and preserve a skilled workforce of Direct Support Professionals (DSPs) to provide safe and secure services for people with IDD.

Many IDD providers are facing the grave reality of having to close their programs if they do not receive help immediately. If providers cannot continue to operate and provide services, what happens to the people with IDD?

DSPs are central to the health and safety of those living with IDD. Community-based service providers rely on a skilled workforce to support individuals at home, in day programs, and in competitive integrated employment. Without a well-trained and stable DSP workforce, people with IDD are in peril and are at risk. Georgia truly cares about these individuals and can do better by ensuring the DSP workforce is recognized and stabilized to protect the health and safety of those with IDD.   

The DSP turnover rate for IDD providers is approaching 50% with the average DSP in Georgia having been on the job for less than one year. Georgia services are funded at a rate that only allows for an hourly DSP wage of $10.64 or $22,131 annually. No one in Georgia can live on that wage! No one can pay rent, buy food, gas, and insurance for that amount.

This is the current reality of the DSP workforce crisis, and it is critical to address it in a meaningful and impactful way as soon as possible. A stable DSP workforce is required to continue the provision of vital support for those with IDD. The health and overall safety of Georgia citizens with IDD is currently at risk.

Georgia's General Assembly must include funding in the state budget during the 2022 legislative session to provide an hourly wage for DSPs that will encourage stability, reduce turnover, and demonstrate our state’s belief that Georgians with IDD do deserve high quality support from a stable and skilled workforce. Georgia’s citizens with IDD desperately need your help NOW.