Illinois Direct Support Professional Workforce Initiative

Description

Ms. Hewitt has an extensive background and work history in the field of developmental disabilities and has worked in various positions over the past 23 years including as a residential Program Director and Director of Training. She is currently a Research Associate at the University of Minnesota, Institute on Community Integration where she directs several federal and state research, evaluation and demonstration projects in the area of direct support staff workforce development and community services for people with disabilities. Ms. Hewitt is a national leader in the area of workforce development and community supports to individuals with developmental disabilities. Current projects include the College of Direct Support a national training curriculum development project that currently offers training to 100,000+ direct support professionals throughout the United States; Mobilizing for Change - an Administration on Developmental Disabilities field initiated project to develop on-line training curriculum for frontline supervisors (College of Frontline Supervision); Removing the Revolving Door: A Research Based Technique to Resolve the Staffing Crisis in Community Supports to People with Disabilities a national project to develop and implement a train the train technical assistance model in five states to teach others how to effectively work with organizations to reduce turnover and vacancy rates of their direct support employees; and, Kansans Mobilizing for Workforce Change a systems change project in the state of Kansas designed to improve retention and recruitment of DSPs in community human service organizations. Ms. Hewitt has authored and co-authored many curriculum, journal articles and manuscripts. A book she co-authored entitled, Staff Recruitment, Retention and Training, will be published by Brookes publishing in the Fall 2004. She is a managing editor of Frontline Initiative a national newsletter for DSPs; a contributing editor for LINKS a newsletter of ANCOR and guest editor of Mental Retardation a journal of the AAMR. She is currently a Board member for the Arc Hennepin-Carver and Friendship Ventures. She is a founding member and past Co-Chair of the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals and a past Board member of the National AAMR. E-mail: hewit005@umn.edu Phone: (612) 625-1098 Web site: http://rtc.umn.edu/wddsp

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