A Look From Within:

Elements of the Staffing Crisis in the I/DD Community

Woman with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing a black top and black pants, sitting in a wicker chair, with tattoo on her left forearm, in a room with beige curtains and a lamp in the background.
Woman with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing a black top and black pants, sitting in a wicker chair, with tattoo on her left forearm, in a room with beige curtains and a lamp in the background.

Authored By: Taylor Hartley-Logan

Updated: September 1, 2026

I sat down with my co-founder, Derek, to talk directly about the DSP staffing crisis: what's driving it, what organizations are up against, and where there's opportunity to make the industry more survivable.

We can't pretend a recruiting firm can solve a workforce crisis decades in the making. But before Tensile Talent existed, Derek spent ten years running direct support and residential programs. He's dealt with the vacancies, overtime, call-offs, and the constant pressure to keep services runningwithout sacrificing quality of care. The experience shaped how we think about staffing today. Over time, it turned into solutions practical enough for one house and scalable enough for an entire organization. While Derek faced every one of these pain points from inside the organization, I spent my career learning how to turn what someone like him knows into actionable data for executives to be empowered to improve their bottom line, lower risk and increase quality of care.

When Derek and I were ready to venture into business together, I analyzed our compatibilities and expertise. It quickly became clear that we have something unique to contribute to a community we care deeply about. So we built Tensile Talent, where we can help ease the tension.

Dive deeper into the elements of the staffing crisis and our approach to each one by clicking through the categories below.

    • DSP turnover runs 37% to 48% a year nationally.

    • ANCOR's 2025 survey of 469 providers found 88% reporting moderate to severe staffing shortages.

    How to Combat: Fighting staff turnover does not have a singular answer. Many organizations like Alpha Supported Living Services in Washington and The Arc Mid-Hudson in New York have used a multi-faceted approach to face the problem including revamping onboarding and training to provide new hires with more support, providing a credential-backed career ladder to DSP’s, and using a realistic job preview to set new hire expectations. Our team is equipped with the hands-on-experience to help your organization get on the right path.

    • $4,600 to $5,200 is the estimated cost of replacing a single DSP, between separation, hiring, and training, not counting the supervisor hours spent managing the exit.

    • Facilities with high turnover see higher rates of injuries, ER visits, and instances of abuse and neglect.

    How to Combat: Candidates often have qualities that don’t translate onto a resume or cover page. We can help find the perfect fit for your program through extensive screening, an honest description of the job and its complexities, and providing your organization with the operational know-how to provide your new hires with the support they need to succeed.

    • The median DSP wage sits below the MIT living wage for a single adult with no children.

    • California's fast food minimum wage of $20 an hour is higher than most direct care pay rates in the country.

    • Direct care wages in California currently average between $17.50 and $18.50 an hour.

    How to Combat: If only we could wave a magic wand and raise the medicaid rate! Unfortunately we have neither magic or a wand, but what we can do is help your organization by lowering the rate of mis-hires. In turn this cuts down on the overtime that is quietly bleeding your program’s budget. We also use more than one talent source to find the right fit, whether that be through recruiting sites, local online caregiving communities, and the network of talent Derek has built after a decade in the field.

    • Fingerprinting, a background check, a physical, and a TB test can take one to two and a half weeks to clear before a new direct support professional can start.

    How to Combat: This is an often overlooked contributor to the nation-wide DSP staffing crisis. The path to becoming a DSP can be much more tedious than the typical onboarding experience seen in retail or warehouse positions. But through consistent communication and operational changes, we can help new hires quickly navigate onboarding before they look elsewhere.

    • Nonprofits run one HR staffer for every 66 employees on average, already thinner than most industries, and that person is rarely dedicated to recruiting alone.

    How to Combat: Tensile Talent exists in this exact gap. We understand the overwhelming responsibilities placed on an internal HR team and hiring managers. Our job is to put in the hours to find and engage with the right candidates so your organization can focus on the people it serves.

  • The staffing crisis touches every level of an organization, from the board down to whoever's filling the open shift(s) tonight. No single hire, wage increase, or policy fix solves it alone.

    What we've found, after living inside it and building a business around fixing pieces of it, is that organizations move forward through the same handful of levers: career ladders that make growth real, vetting that catches tenacity a resume can't show, faster paths through onboarding, and cutting the overtime bleed that's quietly draining the budget.

    That's the work we do, search and consulting both, built around making the crisis survivable, one hire and one process fix at a time.

    We can't solve the crisis. We can help you bear the load. We can help ease the tension.

    See how we work here.