SOC Congressional Letter Has Momentum – Ask Your Members of Congress to Sign On

ANCOR members created strong momentum during our Policy Summit and Hill Day for our Congressional sign-on letter seeking to create federal recognition of Direct Support Professionals as a profession – now is the time to keep that momentum going! It is not too late to ask your U.S. Representatives to sign onto the bipartisan letter, which closes on October 25, 2018 and is led by U.S. Representatives Pete Roskam (R-IL) and Joe Courtney (D-CT). As of now we have over 12 signatures and the Congressional recess is a great time to increase that number! Please schedule in-district meetings with your Congressional offices (resources here) and/or share our action tool with your DSPs!

Why does this matter? Creating federal recognition of the DSP profession will allow access to critical data on national wage, recruitment trends that providers can leverage in rate-setting discussions as well as use to inform hiring, retention and partnerships.

The details: The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects wage and other such employment data for DSPs but puts it in the same “basket” as other professions such as home health aides (HHAs), personal care aides (PCAs), camp counselors. These fields all have different duties and funding streams, making it hard for states, providers and organizations such as Workforce Investment Bureaus to engage in long-term planning and policy solutions to address the DSP workforce crisis. Creating a SOC for DSPs is an important first step to producing strong DSP workforce policies – so please take action today!