Celebrating DSP Recognition Week
Think about the places that make up your life.
The coffee shop where they know your order. The grocery store you stop at on the way home. Your job. Your church. A favorite restaurant. The gym. A friend’s house. The park you walk through on a Saturday afternoon.
None of these places is remarkable on its own.
Together, they’re a community. And being part of one is fundamental to a full life.
For people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, Direct Support Professionals make being a part of that community possible.
During Direct Support Professional Recognition Week, September 13–19, VOA Southeast celebrates the people whose work reaches far beyond the services they provide. Every day, DSPs help people engage with the world around them, pursue their interests, build relationships and take their place in the communities they call home.
A Life Is Bigger Than a Program
Support for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities has changed considerably over the generations.
For much of American history, people with disabilities were separated from community life. Often, they lived in large institutions with little control over where they went, what they did or how they spent their days.
Eventually, a different approach began to take hold. Community-based services grew from the belief that people with disabilities belong in communities and should have opportunities to participate in everyday life alongside everyone else.
However, that idea does not come alive through programs alone.
It comes alive through people.
DSPs help turn access into experience.
For example, a DSP may help someone get ready for work and arrive on time. Later, that same person may want support during a grocery trip, an afternoon out or a community event. In addition, DSPs help people explore interests, maintain routines and spend time with the people who matter to them.
Sometimes, the work involves helping someone navigate a new experience.
Other times, it means helping make Tuesday happen.
Either way, it matters.
Belonging Is Built Through Participation
Being present in a community and belonging to one are not quite the same thing.
Instead, belonging develops over time.
First, you become a regular somewhere. Soon, you start recognizing people, and they begin recognizing you. At work, you learn the rhythms of the day. Around town, you find a restaurant you like or discover an activity that keeps bringing you back. Eventually, acquaintances become familiar faces, and familiar faces sometimes become friends.
In many ways, this is how communities become ours.
DSPs help create more opportunities for those connections to happen.
As a result, something important begins to take place in both directions.
The person receiving support becomes more connected to the community. At the same time, the community has more opportunities to know that person as a neighbor, coworker, customer, teammate or friend.
That matters because inclusion is not created by a statement or a policy. Rather, it grows when people share spaces, experiences, responsibilities, conversations and ordinary days together.
The Work Behind an Ordinary Day
Much of what DSPs make possible may look wonderfully unremarkable from the outside.
Someone heads to work.
Later, a friend joins them for lunch.
Maybe the afternoon includes a trip to the grocery store.
Or perhaps the day ends with an activity they love.
That is precisely the point.
After all, a full life is made up of thousands of ordinary experiences. People with intellectual and developmental disabilities deserve access to the same richness of everyday life as anyone else.
Across VOA Southeast, DSPs help make those experiences possible. At the same time, they support each person according to their individual needs, preferences and goals.
Of course, the work requires skill, patience and judgment. Just as importantly, it requires curiosity about the person receiving support. What do they enjoy? Where do they want to go? Who do they want to know? What kind of life feels meaningful to them?
Ultimately, those answers belong to the individual.
The DSP helps open the door.
Celebrating the People Who Help Build Community
This DSP Recognition Week, VOA Southeast celebrates the professionals who help people live fuller, more connected lives in communities across the Southeast.
Their impact can be found in the relationships people build, the places they become part of, the experiences they collect and the routines that slowly turn a collection of streets and buildings into somewhere they belong.
In turn, that work strengthens our communities, too.
After all, a strong community is not one where some people are simply welcomed into the life happening around them.
Instead, it is one where everyone is already part of it.
So, to the DSPs of VOA Southeast: thank you for helping make that possible.
Interested in Becoming a Direct Support Professional with VOA Southeast?
Bring your patience. Bring your curiosity. Bring the parts of yourself that make you good with people.
Then, let us help with the rest.