The People Who Make the Mission Possible

At Frazer Center’s annual dance, the rodeo theme showed up everywhere.

Adult participants decorated their own cowboy hats with help from Direct Support Professionals. “Wanted” posters featuring each participant hung in the atrium, and families liked them so much that many took them home. DSPs helped prepare food, set up the space, and create table displays. Friends and family members joined the celebration, along with guests from other organizations serving people with disabilities.

And when it was time for line dancing, Sandra Reese took the lead.

Sandra guided the crowd through dances including the Electric Slide while Mr. Lett, one of Frazer’s teachers, served as DJ. It was a celebration, but it was also a glimpse of something that happens every day in Frazer’s Adult Program: Direct Support Professionals building relationships with the people they support.

For Sandra, that’s at the heart of the job.

“Being a DSP is really about relationships,” she said. “Sometimes helping looks like teaching someone a new skill or supporting them when they are having a difficult day, and sometimes it’s laughing together, playing a game, going out into the community, or just sitting down and listening.”

Those relationships are essential to Frazer Center’s mission.

“We can’t fulfill our mission without them,” said Unondus Walker, Director of Adult Services. “They provide support, leadership, friendship. They build rapport.”

DSPs work alongside adults with developmental disabilities as they build skills, pursue goals, spend time in the community, navigate difficult moments, and simply live their lives. The work requires knowing each person as an individual.

“You have to learn each person because what works for one person may not work for another,” Sandra said.

Statewide Recognition for Sandra and June

This year, Frazer Center had another reason to celebrate during Direct Support Professional Recognition Week.

The Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD) selected Sandra as one of just four DSP Spotlight Winners from across the state. Frazer DSP June Wilson was also recognized as one of 18 DSP Honorable Mentions.

Sandra has spent decades serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She says helping others has always come naturally to her. What has kept her in the field are the people and families she has come to know and the opportunity to see people learn, become more independent, and reach their goals.

“After 38 years, I have worked with so many people that I still run into former participants and families in the community who remember me,” she said.

That kind of connection isn’t unusual at Frazer.

Unondus describes the Adult Program as a family. DSPs know participants well enough to recognize the things they enjoy and the support they need. They show up for people in ways that don’t always fit neatly into a job description.

“When you enter here, you might have a hard time identifying the DSPs in the room because they are immersed with the participants,” Unondus said. “It’s a very hands-on situation. The DSPs are the boots on the ground.”

The annual dance offered one joyful example of that community.

Brittany Price, Adult Services Program Coordinator, helped spearhead the event. She said families look forward to the dance each year.

“The parents always compliment how good a job we do,” Brittany said. “They look forward to coming, and wish we could have more events.”

One parent noticed something else during the celebration: how much the participants support one another.

That sense of community doesn’t happen because of a single party or program. It’s built over time by showing up for people, knowing them, and being part of their lives.

DSP Recognition Week gives us a reason to celebrate the people doing that work. It also asks us to notice people whose contributions can become almost invisible precisely because they are so deeply part of the community.

At Frazer, DSPs are there for new skills and hard days, community outings and everyday routines. Sometimes they’re there to listen.

And sometimes they’re leading the Electric Slide.