Direct Support Professionals (DSPs) provide crucial services for more than 125,000 New Yorkers with developmental disabilities, including autism spectrum disorders, all across the state. The important roles that DSPs serve cannot be understated; I see it every day in my interactions and visits to programs at our hundreds of service provider partners throughout New York. DSPs are passionate people who enjoy empowering people and making a difference in their lives while bringing smiles to their faces.
Unfortunately, the positive impact Direct Support Professionals make in the lives of people with disabilities has been negatively affected by mounting workforce challenges across all human service industries. In response, Governor Kathy Hochul, the New York State Legislature, and OPWDD have launched extensive initiatives aimed at professionalizing this vital workforce, promoting public awareness of direct support careers, providing advanced educational opportunities, credentials, and career ladders for DSPs, and enhancing their wages.
One important and very visible initiative launched this past Spring is the statewide #MoreThanWork DSP recruitment marketing campaign.
Simply put, #MoreThanWork highlights the essential roles that Direct Support Professionals play in the lives of people with developmental disabilities and promotes the tremendous value and meaning found within a direct support career. Our team at OPWDD partnered with Latham-based advertising agency Vibrant Brands, Inc. to implement this comprehensive marketing campaign and engaged media buying company OpAD Media Solutions to spread the campaign across traditional and digital media platforms to boost the recruitment efforts of service provider agencies throughout the state. The campaign is providing enhanced visibility and the opportunity to attract motivated job candidates to the 225 service providers who are taking part. The entire OPWDD service system will benefit from this campaign.
#MoreThanWork is reaching as wide an audience as possible, depicting DSPs in their day-to-day work and the meaningful nature of what they do. To ensure the campaign is accessible to diverse audiences, the campaign’s content reflects New York’s great diversity and is available in a number of languages.
The website, DirectSupportCareers.com, serves as the campaign’s hub for participating agencies to promote their mission and their role in New York communities, as well as the career opportunities they are offering. The agency profiles offer providers the opportunity to highlight what sets their agency apart from others, its unique mission, and any distinctive focus or attribute that will help them stand out as a great place for people to launch a meaningful career.
Agency profiles are categorized by county and displayed in a randomized order to ensure equal visibility. This helps show job seekers the vast opportunities that exist across the state with providers that offer the full range of developmental disabilities services and supports. Job seekers may then connect directly with any developmental disabilities agency whose opportunities interest them to learn more and apply for specific positions.
One thing that makes the #MoreThanWork campaign stand out is its engaging and authentic content. Its video interviews offer testimonials with real Direct Support Professionals using their own words, and the static ads show photos of real DSPs at work supporting real New Yorkers with developmental disabilities. These images are being featured widely across digital and social media. In addition, traditional advertising spans billboards, bus shelters, subway car displays, gas pump toppers, bus tails, and more and can be seen in every county of New York. All of these ads and videos point job seekers to the central website DirectSupportCareers.com to learn how they can start their own rewarding career as a DSP.
The campaign, which launched in mid-March 2024, has already generated:
- 13,638 “click-throughs” to provider agency websites from job listings on the #MoreThanWork website,
- 155,405 total website visits,
- 7 million total ad impressions and
- 5 million complete video views.
We are looking forward to seeing even greater reach and activity as the campaign moves forward.
As efforts continue in the digital media, social media, and earned media space, we are confident the campaign will attract diverse and qualified job applicants and support the development of future committed leaders in the developmental disabilities field. In this way, #MoreThanWork will help establish a more robust support system for people with developmental disabilities across the state of New York and, in doing so, serve as a model for similar initiatives to be introduced across the country.
OPWDD is committed to addressing the significant DSP workforce crisis that is affecting those with developmental disabilities throughout New York. #MoreThanWork is but one of many initiatives we have underway, each one making important strides in how the world views and respects the tremendously valuable work of direct support professionals. I’m thrilled that the #MoreThanWork campaign is visible in our communities and successfully engaging the public with our mission. I’m excited to see its impact in New York State and across the nation as others work to build their direct support workforce. But, most importantly, I’m so hopeful for how it will undoubtedly support the development of a caring, committed and talented direct support workforce to empower people with developmental disabilities.
And that is, after all, why everyone in this field does the work that we do.
Willow Baer is Acting Commissioner of OPWDD. To learn more about #MoreThanWork, visit DirectSupportCareers.com and the campaign’s social media platforms across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube. To learn more about OPWDD’s other DSP workforce initiatives, visit OPWDD’s webpage at www.opwdd.ny.gov/supporting-and-strengthening-direct-support-workforce.
Reference
1 The Arc New York 2024 Budget Advocacy Info Sheet, Feb. 2024. https://thearcny.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2024BudgetPrioritiesKG2824.pdf
