About Us
Learn all about the CDS.
Misson & Values
Our Mission
The College of Direct Support is a learning gateway for contemporary best practices for Direct Support Professionals. By incorporating web-based learning, backed by nationally recognized curricula, the CDS is designed to promote a profession of direct support.
Our Core Values
The College of Direct Support strives to reflect a core set of 10 values in the training programs it provides to Direct Support Professionals and to supervisors and managers. These values include:
Inclusion and community membership
Persons with disabilities have the right to be included as members of communities in which they choose to live and should receive the support they need from people committed and skillful in supporting their inclusion and community membership.
Full citizenship and honored rights
Persons with disabilities should enjoy the rights and respect of their status as citizens and human beings and should be supported by people who respect their citizenship and rights, support them in exercising their rights and assist them in the knowledge and skills of active and effective civic participation.
Independent and productive living
Persons with disabilities deserve opportunities and support to live their lives as independently and productively as they are able and to be supported and taught in a manner that continually expands their skills and opportunities for independent and productive living.
Safe and healthy lives
Persons with disabilities deserve access to safe and healthy environments, to information that assists them in making safe and healthy decisions and to medical, dental and mental heath services that they need, and to be supported in a manner that maximizes the benefits they derive from safety- and health-oriented environments, information and services.
Choice and self-determined lives
Persons with disabilities have the right to live self-directed lives in which their preferences and choices are the primary factors in determining the direction and activities of their daily lives, the settings in which those lives are lived, and the people with whom they live share their lives, including those from whom they receive direct support and other services.
Sustained valued relationships
People with disabilities have the same basic needs for family, social, spiritual and intimate relationships as do other human beings and deserve the supports that recognize and facilitate response to such needs.
Competent and effective direct support
People with disabilities who require direct support to fulfill basic rights, needs, preferences and responsibilities deserve to receive those supports from people who have the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes to do so competently and effectively.
Stable and dependable support
People with disabilities who depend on direct support to fulfill their basic rights, needs, preferences and responsibilities deserve sufficient stability and dependability in those who support them to permit the mutual trust, knowledge and communication that are fundamental to effective direct support.
Ethical, value-based treatment
People with disabilities who require direct support deserve to receive that support from people who do so from an ethical and value-based foundation of recognition and commitment to the rights and inherent value of all people and responsibility to protect individual civil and religious freedoms, privacy, autonomy, and equality.
Leadership development
People with disabilities and those persons who support them must experience opportunities for leadership with encouragement, education, mentorship and favorable circumstances to develop their leadership skills and to advance in roles and careers of in which their leadership can be exercised.
