DSP training for Georgia's NOW and COMP waivers is governed by the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD) through the Provider Manual for Community Developmental Disability Providers (Part II, Section 1.E, Staff Qualifications and Training) and enforced through the IDD Certification Review Instrument used in provider audits. The requirements apply to direct support staff of DBHDD-contracted waiver providers across residential, day, and community services.

Before any contact with individuals served, new staff must complete orientation covering the provider's scope and policies, HIPAA and confidentiality, individual rights, and recognition and reporting of abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Within 60 days of hire, DSPs must complete the full core curriculum: person-centered values, holistic health and individualized needs, human rights, communication, behavior support and crisis de-escalation, cultural diversity, fire safety, emergency and disaster procedures, standard precautions, first aid and safety, BCLS/CPR with written and hands-on components (AHA, HSI, or American Red Cross), the specific medications and side effects of the individuals served, suicide prevention (using recognized curricula such as AIM or QPR), ethics, dual diagnosis, and body mechanics.

The annual requirement is one of the clearest in the Southeast: a minimum of 16 hours of competency-based training each year, including required repeat topics. Developmental Disability Professionals (DDPs) — the credentialed oversight role on each individual's team — complete 8 hours annually, which may be DBHDD-sponsored "or other" training. An LMS that automatically tracks each DSP's 16-hour annual cycle and each DDP's 8 hours, flagging shortfalls before the certification review does, removes the most common audit exposure here.

Several items are gated to specific delivery formats. CPR/BCLS must include a hands-on skills component from an accepted certifying body. Behavior support and crisis de-escalation must be delivered through "nationally benchmarked" systems — CPI, Mandt, and Safety-Care are the recognized examples — alongside training on the Georgia Crisis Response System (GCRS). Medication support follows Section 1.D of the manual (supervision of self-administration), and administration by unlicensed staff runs through Georgia's proxy-caregiver framework with RN-delegated training. Mandatory DBHDD-run onboarding applies only to leadership of newly enrolling agencies, not to DSPs.

The delivery model is open market. DBHDD offers a free Relias-hosted course library (often called DBHDD University or the DBHDD Learning Center) whose courses are described as recommended and as one way to satisfy topic requirements — an option, not a mandate. There is no state approval process for outside curricula: the IDD Certification Review verifies compliance by examining personnel records for documented evidence of each required topic, which means what matters is accurate topic coverage and clean documentation, whatever the source.

Training and eTracking Solutions provides online DSP training built for Georgia's requirements — courses mapped to the Provider Manual Part II, Section 1.E topic areas from person-centered values through dual diagnosis, automatic tracking of the 16-hour annual minimum and the 60-day initial deadline, and per-topic completion documentation organized the way the IDD Certification Review Instrument checks personnel records. Gated items — hands-on CPR, nationally benchmarked crisis systems, RN-delegated medication training — are tracked alongside so the whole record stands together in a DBHDD review.