IDD Leader

A volunteer dodgeball class for five people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. That's where Daniel Caridi's company started — and somehow it turned into an EHR platform now used by over 400 disability service providers across the country.

Daniel isn't a DSP. He doesn't have a family member with IDD. He stumbled into this world by accident, and that outsider's perspective is exactly what let him see something the...

There was a woman in her 80s. Her one goal was to get her driver's license. When someone finally asked where she'd go first, she said the grocery store. Then: "I'd go see my sister." They didn't know she had a sister. They'd been supporting her for years.

That's what happens when someone asks the right question.

Most leaders in IDD services are asking plenty of questions. Satisfaction surveys. Engagement pulse checks. Annual reviews....

What if the thing you've been dreading is actually the thing that could transform your organization?

For the past year, Nate kept noticing a pattern: a disproportionate number of the highest-performing organizations he interviewed were CQL accredited. When he asked them about it — off the record, almost as an aside — they didn't talk about compliance. They used words like transformational.

So in Part 1 of ...

Most IDD organizations genuinely care about their staff. You celebrate DSP Appreciation Week, recognize milestones, and try to say “thank you” in meaningful ways—and yet, people still leave. Not because recognition doesn’t matter, but because much of it isn’t tied to what actually drives retention. Well-intentioned efforts can feel good in the moment without building long-term commitment, and superviso...

Most leaders already know they should be listening more. This episode is about what actually happens when someone does.

Steve Gonyea is a parent, foster parent to 178 kids, and one of the most relentlessly solution-oriented advocates in the IDD space. In Part 2 of this conversation, he shares how he went from barely getting five minutes with politicians to one assemblyman clearing his entire afternoon — because Steve w...

What if the people most likely to solve your retention problem are already on your payroll — and nobody's asking them?

Steve Gonyea has been inside more human services systems than almost anyone: IDD, foster care, juvenile justice, mental health. He's a parent, a foster parent to 178 kids, and a former DSP who went on to become one of the most tenacious advocates in New York State. He's not an executive. He doesn't run...

Most conversations about AI in human services stop at "it's coming." This one is about what's already here.

G.N. Janes, CEO of Valley Community Services, has spent a decade building a data-driven retention system for frontline supervisors and DSPs. We go deep on what happens when artificial intelligence enters that system — how agentic AI works, what it actually looks like when a model flags a struggling supervisor, an...

Most organizations find out a frontline supervisor is struggling the same way they find out an employee is leaving — too late.

G.N. Janes, CEO of Valley Community Services, spent the last decade trying to change that. What started as a wild guess about where the real problem lived — the frontline supervisor level — became a full data infrastructure with weighted dashboards, engagement surveys, and predictiv...

Most workforce programs fail because they stop at 90 days.

The problem compounds from there.

The organizations seeing retention rates up to 90% aren't doing more of the same — they're doing something structurally different. JW Gibbs runs a Department of Labor registered DSP apprenticeship program in Missouri through UMass Boston's Institute for Community Inclusion.

In Part 2, the conversation gets specifi...

The hiring bonus didn't fix it. The career fair didn't fix it. The referral program didn't fix it. And deep down, most leaders in human services already know why — they just haven't had language for it yet.

JW Gibbs spent 25 years in corporate America before entering this field, driven by something personal: a son with significant disabilities who will one day rely on the same workforce JW is trying to fix. He now runs...

Leadership can feel heavy—especially when the demands keep growing, decisions keep stacking up, and everyone else’s challenges seem to roll uphill toward you.

For executives, program leaders, and operational leaders in human services, stress often comes less from the mission itself and more from the complexity of leading people, systems, and priorities all at once.

In this episode, Nate explores one often-overlooked leade...

If you lead a human services organization, you’ve probably watched this play out:

A staff member’s performance starts slipping. Their supervisor sees it. But days turn into weeks, nothing gets said — and by the time anything happens, the employee is disengaged, the team has absorbed the dysfunction, and you’re looking at another preventable vacancy.

It’s not that your supervisors don’t care...

If you’ve ever thought, “Why do I feel like I’m babysitting adults?”… this episode is for you.

In human services, most leaders don’t struggle because they don’t care—they struggle because they were never shown what to actually say and do in the moment when staff push back, avoid responsibility, or just don’t follow through.

In this episode, we walk through four re...

Most organizations are promoting the wrong people. Not because they don’t care. Not because they’re careless. But because they’re using the wrong criteria.
 
In this episode, Nate breaks down a simple but powerful rule:
➡️ Never promote an “ask twice” person.

From there, he unpacks the two traits that actually predict supervisor success—and why being a great DSP doesn’t...

What if the thing your best DSPs want most… isn’t more pay?

In Part 2 of this conversation with Scott and Craig De Fasselle from DSP Magnet, we shift from big-picture staffing challenges to something surprisingly simple—and incredibly powerful:

➡️ The small, human moments that make people stay.

From 1-minute appreciation messages to better questions leaders can ask, this episode is packed with practical ways to stre...

You hired 100 DSPs… so why are you still short-staffed?

In this episode, Nate sits down with Scott De Fasselle and Craig De Fasselle from DSP Magnet to unpack one of the most frustrating realities in IDD services:

👉 You’re hiring… but you’re not actually getting ahead.

We dig into the hidden reasons behind the “revolving door” — and why the problem may not be what yo...

Staff retention can feel incredibly frustrating.

You try retention bonuses. Recognition programs. Hiring harder. Posting more jobs. Improving onboarding. And yet… the vacancies keep coming.

For many leaders in human services, improving retention feels like trying to carry water in your hands—no matter how much effort you put in, it keeps slipping through your fingers.

But the organizations that ach...

If your team is struggling with retention, the answer probably isn’t another pizza party.

In Part 2 of this conversation, Nate sits down again with workforce strategist Holli Beth Clauser, founder of ABA C.A.R.E.S. Staffing and host of The People Contingency Podcast, to talk about the deeper systems that actually influence whether staff stay or leave.

Together they unpack practical ways leaders can spot early wa...

When you're short-staffed, under pressure, and drowning in overtime… speed feels like the only thing that matters.

But what if hiring fast is actually making your turnover worse?

In this episode, Nate sits down with Holli Beth Clauser, founder of ABA C.A.R.E.S. and host of The People Contingency Podcast, to unpack what most human services leaders get wrong about recruitment.

Holli has lived the high-pres...