On August 5, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will consider the Recognizing the Role of Direct Support Professionals Act (S. 3211). This markup represents a critical juncture for this bipartisan legislation, and we need your help!
About the Legislation
S. 3211 is a zero-cost bill that would establish a standard occupational classification (SOC) for direct support professionals (DSPs), formally recognizing the essential role they play in enabling people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) to live and work in their homes and communities.
DSPs are not currently tracked as a distinct occupation in federal labor data. This omission has significant consequences: without a dedicated SOC, federal and state governments lack the standardized data on vacancies, turnover, wages, and workforce demographics needed to address the nationwide DSP workforce crisis. The absence of this classification is not a technicality; it is a structural barrier to solving a problem that borne by our most vulnerable residents.
Relevance to Our Advocacy
Our advocacy led to the release of critical workforce data here in Massachusetts, that has been analyzed in our most recent report, Stretched to Capacity: The Workforce Crisis in Human Services. The report was published earlier by the Providers’ Council and the UMASS Donahue Institute, outlining the crisis in our sector locally. Our livable wage bill (S.130/H.223), now reported favorably to both the House and Senate Ways and Means Committees, is aimed at closing the wage gap among human services workers in our sector. State-level data collection has taken us this far, but no standardized national data on the DSP workforce exists, so the burden of collecting it continues to fall on individual state agencies and providers.
A federal SOC would close that gap, giving the Commonwealth and every other state concrete evidence that insufficient reimbursement rates have driven high turnover and vacancy rates in the DSP workforce. That evidence is the starting point for valuing this workforce appropriately and addressing these disparities at scale. Passage of S. 3211 would strengthen the foundation our state-level advocacy already rests on, while elevating the standing of DSPs nationwide.