Building a Stronger Workforce With Direct Support Professional Caregivers

The demand for direct support professional caregivers (DSPs) continues to rise — especially within intellectual and developmental disability (I/DD) services, behavioral health, and community-based care. These caregivers are the foundation of daily support for individuals with complex needs, playing vital roles in promoting independence, safety, and well-being. But as their responsibilities grow and care settings become more complex, so do the challenges for the organizations that support them.

As organizations face high turnover, increasing certification requirements, and mounting compliance responsibilities, 69% have to turn away new referrals — a sign of just how strained direct care systems have become.

Employers are expected to do more with less, often without clear guidance on what’s required. 

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Having a healthcare compliance management system to streamline onboarding, provide regulatory guidance, manage training and certifications, and reduce compliance burdens can help stabilize the workforce without overextending staff. This blog explores practical strategies to reduce friction, support direct support professional caregiver development, and build scalable processes that strengthen team stability and care continuity.

Direct Support Professional Caregivers Are in Demand

Direct care support teams are stretched thin. As healthcare systems shift toward more person-centered, community-based models, the responsibilities placed on DSPs have expanded significantly. These professionals are expected to manage complex daily care routines, follow detailed service plans, and support both behavioral and medical needs — all while maintaining compliance with state and federal guidelines.

Meanwhile, the demand for qualified staff is outpacing the supply. The direct care workforce is projected to see 8.9 million total job openings between 2022 and 2032, reflecting both growth and attrition across care environments. But while this is a workforce development issue, it’s also a care delivery concern. 45% of providers have reported an increase in reportable incidents tied directly to staffing shortages, signaling real risks to quality, consistency, and safety.

A strong direct support professional caregiver workforce can’t be built through recruitment alone. It requires systems and strategies that support caregivers from day one, with clear onboarding, accessible training, and operational infrastructure that eases their daily burden and helps them succeed in their roles.

Why More Employers Are Requiring NADSP Certification

As the responsibilities of direct support professional caregivers become more complex, employers are increasingly looking for ways to ensure consistency, quality, and professionalism across their teams. Certification from the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals (NADSP) has emerged as a practical strategy to meet those goals for employee development and operational resilience.

NADSP offers a nationally recognized, tiered certification framework that supports workforce standardization and advancement. Through a mix of certification levels, training modules, an online academy, and accredited education, the program helps organizations establish a shared foundation of person-centered, ethical care.

While not mandated in most states, more employers are beginning to require or strongly encourage NADSP certification because it supports:

• Higher care quality: Certification reinforces core competencies and best practices in behavioral support, communication, safety, and empowerment.
• Retention through growth: Structured development paths give direct support professional caregivers a sense of career pathing, improving morale and reducing turnover.
• Workforce recognition: Certification validates the value of DSPs’ work — an important step in elevating a profession often under recognized.
• Preparedness and consistency: Trained, certified staff are better equipped to deliver safe, stable care even amid ongoing staffing shortages.

Certification also includes a continuing education requirement — 20 hours of continuing education (CE) every two years — which ensures DSPs stay current with evolving standards and care practices. Supporting this CEU continuing education internally has become a key part of workforce development for many organizations, especially those navigating turnover and training fatigue.

How To Support Direct Support Professional Caregivers Without Increasing Administrative Burden

Supporting direct care teams requires more than good intentions — it requires systems that reflect the realities of their day-to-day work. For DSPs working in high-compliance environments like group homes, behavioral health programs, and home-based services, even small inefficiencies can impact safety, training completion, or documentation.

As certification becomes more common, providing the CEs required to maintain it is a huge benefit to direct support professionals. Platforms like MedTrainer centralize training and compliance workflows and offer NADSP-aligned CE content, giving employees a way to simplify renewals, track CE progress, and stay current without additional work.

And with AI-powered workflows now embedded, these systems do even more to automate, update, and scale critical compliance functions in the background.

Rely on Experts for Training That Fits the Role and the Day-to-Day

• Provide online training that is role-specific and meets multiple compliance requirements to reduce the time direct support professional caregivers spend in training
• Rely on a knowledgeable healthcare learning management system to deliver state-specific training on topics like abuse prevention, de-escalation, and safe transfers 
• Get immediate answers to training questions, like whether HIPAA or abuse prevention training is required in specific states or settings

Simplify New Hire Onboarding

• Automate employee onboarding by facility, role, or service line, so new hires can ramp up quickly
• Store documents like CPR cards or TB tests in an online platform that automatically sends email reminders before expiration, saving hours of manual admin time

Create an Efficient Policy Management Process

• Ensure direct support professional caregivers have instant access to up-to-date policies and procedures to limit incidents
• Use a healthcare policy management system that keeps all tasks in one location — from a template library to electronic signatures and online storage
• Keep policies compliant with the latest regulations using built-in AI that flags outdated or out-of-compliance policies automatically

Maintain Oversight Without Micromanagement

• Use administrator dashboards to track training and CE progress by location, department, or role
• Generate audit-ready reports to stay prepared for Joint Commission inspections, CARF evaluations, or internal reviews

By reducing manual tracking and unifying documentation, compliance management systems empower DSPs to focus more on client care and less on administrative burdens — while giving administrators the visibility and control needed to maintain compliance across locations.

A Stronger Workforce Starts With Smarter Support

Direct support professional caregivers are essential to the stability and quality of community-based care. But with rising demands, evolving requirements, and persistent workforce shortages, hiring alone isn’t enough. Strengthening this workforce requires scalable healthcare compliance systems that reduce friction, streamline compliance, and support continuous development.

Many organizations are addressing this need with platforms like MedTrainer, which provide the required training for direct care professionals that is vetted by subject matter experts and even offers continuing education credit. Built for distributed, high-compliance care teams, MedTrainer helps reduce administrative burden, improve retention, and keep staff prepared and audit-ready—all without pulling them away from the people they support. 

Schedule a demo to see how MedTrainer can help reduce administrative complexity and build a stronger, more supported DSP workforce.