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Direct support professional skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025
4 min read
Direct support professional example skills
Below we've compiled a list of the most critical direct support professional skills. We ranked the top skills for direct support professionals based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 18.9% of direct support professional resumes contained direct support as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a direct support professional needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 direct support professional skills for your resume and career

1. Direct Support

Direct support is a one-on-one service that helps with daily life skills and tasks that strengthen one's independence. A direct support professional is responsible for a variety of tasks related to the general care of people with physical, cognitive, or developmental disabilities. The goal is to assist people to reach their full potential and to integrate and get engaged in their community.

Here's how direct support professionals use direct support:
  • Direct Support Professional: Responsible for the care and supervision of children and adolescent residential clients with intellectual disabilities.
  • Direct Support Professional Cared for individuals with severe to profound mental retardation Assisted individuals with daily activities i.e.

2. Developmental Disabilities

Here's how direct support professionals use developmental disabilities:
  • Support individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities
  • Provide tailored, individualized support to adults with developmental disabilities who reside within group residence homes in the Greater Rochester community.

3. Autism

Here's how direct support professionals use autism:
  • Direct care of adolescent with disabilities (dual conditioned Autism & Down Syndrome): Bath routine/Oral Hygiene/Dressing/Meal Preparation/Transport/Medicine administration/Community outings
  • Assist children diagnosed with Autism and mental retardation in activities of daily living, community integration and appropriate behavior modification.

4. Direct Care

Direct care is the act of identifying people with special needs and offering the necessary care for them.

Here's how direct support professionals use direct care:
  • Provide direct care to individuals with psychiatric and mental retardation population in a residential setting followed with community integration.
  • Direct care for developmentally disabled adults including passing of medication, preparing meals, transporting, personal cares

5. DSP

Digital signal processing, DSP, is the use of digital processing to perform a variety of signal processing operations, primarily audio signals. It is about developing algorithms that can improve a signal in a certain way or extract useful information. It is mainly found in audio signals, voice processing, RADAR, seismology, audio, SONAR, voice recognition, and some financial signals.

Here's how direct support professionals use dsp:
  • Achieved company Outstanding Performance award based on DSP code performance during successful demonstration, meeting FCC accuracy requirements.
  • Design and develop VHDL systems implementing advanced DSP in FPGA using mostly linear algebra for electromagnetic applications.

6. Mental Health

Mental health is the state of wellbeing in which an individual can cope with the regular stresses and tensions of life, and can work productively without having any emotional or psychological breakdown. Mental health is essential for a person of any age and helps them make the right decisions in their life.

Here's how direct support professionals use mental health:
  • Provide intensive supervision and therapeutic services to youth with disruptive behavior, mental health and intellectual disabilities in a residential setting.
  • Provide assistance to individuals with mental health conditions in community-based setting with daily activities as well as facilitating community involvement.

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7. Intellectual Disabilities

Here's how direct support professionals use intellectual disabilities:
  • Provide assistance to individuals with intellectual disabilities, brain injury and emotional, behavioral or medical complexities in a community-based setting.
  • Assist with personal hygiene, daily medication allotment while empowering individuals with intellectual disabilities to help them discover their limitless potential.

8. Home Health

Here's how direct support professionals use home health:
  • Provided home health care for mentally and physically challenged individuals.
  • Provided home health care to individuals with developmental disabilities.

9. Compassion

Here's how direct support professionals use compassion:
  • Recognized for compassion and empathy toward residents.
  • Recognized for exhibiting unwavering professionalism and compassion.

10. Medical Appointments

A medical appointment is a scheduled / specific day and time for a person to be examined or treated by a physician, nurse, or other licensed healthcare professional. The aim of the medical appointment is for the physician to be able to identify health problems or illnesses at an early stage.

Here's how direct support professionals use medical appointments:
  • Assisted individuals with daily household tasks, personal cares, medication administration, community experiences, medical appointments and recreation activities.
  • Assist developmental disabled individuals with daily living, advocate for consumers on medical appointments, participate in community inclusion.

11. Group Homes

Here's how direct support professionals use group homes:
  • Provide assistance with all activities of daily living for adults with mental retardation in community integrated living arrangement group homes.
  • Direct care work with individuals with developmental disabilities in residential group homes and supported living facilities.

12. Home Management

Here's how direct support professionals use home management:
  • Facilitated home management including basic housekeeping, shopping and other bookkeeping tasks.
  • Document services provided, preforming home management, administrate medication.

13. Community Integration

Community integration pertains to the different procedures that help patients integrate and become well-functioning members of a community.

Here's how direct support professionals use community integration:
  • Participated with integrating the consumers in social and leisure activities to include community integration, agency sponsored activities and family visits.
  • Followed levels of supervision for general community integration, family visits, medical appointments, counseling and others as needed.

14. Foster Care

Here's how direct support professionals use foster care:
  • Worked with adult males with developmental disabilities and mental illness in a community Adult Foster Care group home.
  • Support children in long term foster care and assist them with the daily challenges that life presents.

15. AMAP

Here's how direct support professionals use amap:
  • Administered prescribed medications to residents with mental and physical disabilities under AMAP (Approved Medication Administration Personnel) certification.
  • Provided care to adults with intellectual & developmental disabilities while administering their medication via AMAP certification
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List of direct support professional skills to add to your resume

Direct support professional skills

The most important skills for a direct support professional resume and required skills for a direct support professional to have include:

  • Direct Support
  • Developmental Disabilities
  • Autism
  • Direct Care
  • DSP
  • Mental Health
  • Intellectual Disabilities
  • Home Health
  • Compassion
  • Medical Appointments
  • Group Homes
  • Home Management
  • Community Integration
  • Foster Care
  • AMAP
  • Social Work
  • Money Management
  • ISP
  • Incident Reports
  • Urinals
  • Ongoing Support
  • Mental Illness
  • Supported Living
  • Community Involvement
  • Food Preparation
  • Community Outings
  • Administer Medications
  • ADL
  • Independent Living
  • Groceries
  • Bedpans
  • Applied Behavior Analysis
  • Household Chores
  • Meal Prep
  • Blood Pressure
  • Emotional Support
  • Patient Care
  • Vital Signs
  • CPI
  • Infection Control Procedures
  • Oral Hygiene
  • Walkers
  • Clean Environment
  • Crisis Situations
  • First Aid Aed
  • Resuscitation

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Research Team
Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

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