Dear friends and colleagues,
I hope you’re finding this Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month to be a time of pride and excitement when you see people with developmental disabilities asserting who they are in OPWDD’s “I AM” campaign and hear from self-advocates in our Empowerment videos as they explain how they want to be seen and what advocacy means to them. It is a month of speaking out, and I hope that motivates you as it does me.
I am excited to announce that today, OPWDD and our service provider agency partners have launched a statewide Direct Support Professional recruitment campaign called #MoreThanWork. It is our sincere hope that this joint effort will provide a central, user-friendly hub for job seekers to find rewarding opportunities in our field and will help strengthen and grow the ranks of the direct support workforce that is so vital to our shared mission.
The campaign goals are to educate the public and, in particular, the job-seeking public, about the importance and fulfilling nature of direct support work and to connect potential job candidates to opportunities supporting New Yorkers with developmental disabilities across the state. The campaign will be highly visible throughout our communities with compelling, authentic tv and radio advertisements and on social and digital media. It will point interested job seekers to a central, non-governmental website www.directsupportcareers.com where they can connect directly to service providers to learn more about the career opportunities that are available near them. It will also create and make available to service providers effective recruitment resources that can enhance their ongoing recruitment activities.
The campaign was developed with input from self-advocates, non-profit service providers, family members and members of diverse communities. Their guidance helped shape the overall look and feel of the campaign, and the ready participation of many of our developmental disability service providers has been a tremendous support. By working together, we can continue to do everything in our collective power to address the workforce challenges that are impacting the lives of people we seek to support and empower.
I hope you will visit our campaign website and begin to see our #MoreThanWork ads in your own travels, online and in your community. I also hope you will follow the campaign on social media and share its posts and its important message. I invite any service providers who have not yet joined the campaign to do so by contacting OPWDD at Communications.Office@opwdd.ny.gov. There is no cost to do so, and it’s not too late to make sure your agency is recruiting through this very visible and moving campaign.
I look forward to seeing the developmental disabilities field and the important work of our dedicated direct support professionals take on greater visibility as our #MoreThanWork campaign promotes awareness, appreciation and support for more caring professionals to join our workforce.
Sincerely,
Kerri E. Neifeld
Commissioner
ENYDDA 