Good News Friday!

Nov-19-2021

Employees

For the past several months, we have been talking to anyone and everyone we can about the hiring crisis faced by Imagine!, the reasons behind it, and what we are doing to meet the challenge.

Whenever we have discussed the challenge, we were always eager to point out that we were exploring every possible way to alleviate our staffing issues, including looking and thinking outside the box for potential solutions.

We're proud to share that one of those “outside of the box” efforts has paid dividends. Imagine! has been awarded an AmeriCorps Planning Grant to help us redesign our approach to training, onboarding, and professional development for our Direct Support Professionals (DSPs)!

Why is this so important? Well, according to the Case for Inclusion 2020 Report, the average turnover rate for DSPs across the nation now exceeds 50%. High turnover and widespread vacancies are undermining care quality and continuity. DSP experience during training and onboarding contributes significantly to high turnover rates. The extensive training DSPs require should be paced and sequenced so they feel confident, prepared, and effective. Instead, DSPs report feeling “thrown in” to the work, which ranges from providing restroom assistance and managing medications to helping someone call their family or prepare for an appointment.

Having responsibility for supporting all aspects of someone’s life, even for a limited amount of time, is understandably overwhelming. This sense of being undertrained and overwhelmed in turn leads to DSPs exiting their jobs at an alarming pace, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of chronic short-staffing. Therefore, a healthy DSP workforce starts by giving DSPs the information they need to do the job well.

To foster that healthy DSP workforce, Imagine! will use the Planning Grant to hire a dedicated Program Manager to design and implement an AmeriCorps program that will assess the DSP experience as it exists now and develop a new approach to DSP onboarding, training, and ongoing support.

 

We envision a program where AmeriCorps members work at Imagine! group homes and community day service sites throughout Boulder and Broomfield Counties. The AmeriCorps DSP team members will be responsible for providing direct care while using their first-hand experiences as DSPs to redesign our approach to training, onboarding, and professional development. They will be trained in personal care, the use of assistive technology, and the skills necessary to support adults with disabilities either at home or in the community.

 

As part of their service, the AmeriCorps team members will advise Imagine! leadership, make recommendations for staff training and job experience improvements, and develop materials necessary for implementation of a new approach to training and onboarding. Members will receive professional development related to creating effective training curriculums and in subject areas related to effectively supporting healthcare workers, including communication, conflict resolution, and leading teams.

You can learn more about AmeriCorps in the short video below.

We believe the investment of an AmeriCorps program will contribute to the stabilization of our DSP workforce in both the short term, through an infusion of staff, and long term, through the member program deliverables.

 

Now that we have received the grant, we have already begun the process of creating the job description for the Program Manger and will start actively recruiting for the position soon. We will keep you updated as the process moves forward.

 

Before we conclude this post, we must thank the many members of the Imagine! Executive Team and other Imagine! staff members who worked so hard, and so quickly, on the grant. We had a short turnaround time and they rallied and made it happen despite the time crunch. Clearly they did a great job because we received the grant!

So now, onward and upward!

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