Direct Support Professionals: Stress and Resiliency Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Sheppard-Jones et al. (2022) asked direct-support professionals how COVID-19 was hitting them. They used an online survey while the pandemic was still active.

The team looked at stress, quality of life, and resilience. They also checked what the staff knew about hospital rights.

Higher stress went hand in hand with lower quality of life and weaker resilience. The link was strong.

Staff could name disability rights better than their own rights if they landed in the hospital.

Hatton et al. (1999) ran a similar staff survey 23 years earlier. They found wishful coping and fuzzy job roles drove distress. Kathy’s team shows the same roles still matter, but now a health crisis piles on extra weight.

Kurz et al. (2014) showed psychological inflexibility turns workplace stress into burnout. Kathy’s findings line up: when stress climbs, resilience drops.

Adams et al. (2025) studied parents of autistic children and saw daily stress chew up quality of life. The same stress-to-life-quality path shows up in DSPs, hinting the pattern crosses jobs and homes.

You can’t serve clients well if your staff feel crushed. Check stress quickly and often, just like you check problem behavior. Add short resilience drills and clear written cards on hospital rights to onboarding packets. Small moves now can keep your team—and your clients—afloat when the next crisis hits.