Shared from M&L Special Needs Planning, LLC
M&L Special Needs Planning, LLC is a company dedicated to helping families with special needs simplify their complicated and complex special needs journeys. As a financial planning company, we pride ourselves on offering services that help families plan for and secure financially stable futures for loved ones with disabilities. We also help families with the day-to-day planning that can ease financial burdens, help navigate government programs, and plan for the continued financial support of individuals with disabilities after their parents/caregivers are gone.
At M&L, we are both professionals and parents of individuals with disabilities. We feel that these two perspectives give us a unique insight to both the challenges that families face, and the ways in which planning can help individuals overcome these obstacles.
As such, we would like to take the opportunity to briefly discuss an issue that we have been watching worsen over the last few years – staffing shortages in the support services field.
Support Services Staff Shortage
Simply stated, the support services staff shortage in disability communities refers to the high turnover rates and lack of employees willing to work in the support services industry. This crisis is not hidden, nor unacknowledged.
In 2015 we published our first article on the subject, a two part series called Support Staff for Individuals with Disabilities: A Crisis, Part 1 and Part 2. This series explores an article written by Gail Frizzel, in which she discusses the trouble she faces securing a support worker for her daughter with disabilities (and the resulting threat to independent living), as well as the different suggestions and solutions for families experiencing these issues. Although four years old, the issues raised in the article are still relevant. As she wrote in 2015,
“The system of government-funded supports and services that is designed to meet the needs of individuals with disabilities is facing many challenges. Individuals are presenting with a far wider variety of intellectual, physical, and behavioral challenges that ever before. They are living longer. And, they are claiming their right to make choices about where and how they will live their lives. But the greatest challenge to be overcome at this time, before any of the others can be addressed, is the increasing lack of a worker pool, adequate in capacity and skill, to provide the direct support that enable individuals to survive each day.”
In 2017, the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities wrote a report to the President, titled, “America’s Direct Support Workforce Crisis: Effects on People with Intellectual Disabilities, Families, Communities and the US Economy.” In this report, committee members discussed the crisis and explored the ways in which the economy affects and is affected by the shortage of these workers.
And just this year, the UCP’s annual Case for Inclusion report also raised concerns about the shortage, stating: “A significant addition to the 2019 report includes incredibly sobering data about the magnitude of the Direct Support Professional workforce crisis. The inclusion of this issue recognizes that in the absence of a stable, qualified direct support workforce, states will struggle to reduce waiting lists, and to support people to experience community integration – to be included, supported and empowered.”
All parties are in agreement – individuals with disabilities are entitled to live inclusive, integrated, independent lives that are connected to the community. They also all agree that in order for this to be possible, many individuals require the types of services provided by individuals that work in the support services field. This crisis needs to be resolved, and quickly, so that our family members and friends with disabilities can continue to live independent, full lives.
Support Services Shortage: Contributing Factors & Possible Solutions
The factors that are causing this nation-wide shortage are also widely known and discussed in the disability community. It is generally acknowledged that low wages and non- competitive aspects (i.e. no chance for advancement or performance-based incentives, etc.) result in high turnover and fewer numbers of individuals entering the workforce. Those factors, combined with longer life expectancies, higher levels of needs, and growth in the population of individuals with disabilities, means that there is now higher demand for a population of workers that is already experiencing a shortage.
The solution to the problem may seem simple – pay higher wages with competitive benefits and provide greater employee supports and benefits (i.e. health benefits, training, vacation, etc.) to help retain individuals already in the field, and recruit those entering the field. In its report, the Committee of for People with Disabilities fully explores possible solutions, and cited both of the above as recommendations that could help to resolve the crisis. The report also recommended exploring the use of technology to help ease the burden on workers (smart homes, video monitoring, etc.) and to “expand utilization of self direction in long term services” so that individuals could pull from their personal networks of support (friends, neighbours, etc.) to fill the role. To read the recommendations in full, please follow this link.
To Be Continued…
We encourage you to take a moment to browse through our blog archive on this subject, and take a moment to read our 2015, two-part series (referenced above). For more information, please do not hesitate to contact us. As well, check back for our next blog (March 8), where we will discuss the non-profit Integrated Living Opportunities’ (ILO) community building model for independent living, and how this organization handles staffing and supports for its self-advocates.
