Direct support professional training in South Dakota is governed by the Department of Human Services through its Division of Developmental Disabilities (DDD), which certifies the state's roughly twenty Community Support Providers (CSPs). The controlling rule is ARSD 46:11:04:15.01, which structures staff orientation in tiers keyed to time from hire.

The tiers work like this: before assuming duties, staff must be trained on agency policies, emergency procedures, and abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Within 30 days come job duties and the rights of the people supported. Within 6 months, staff complete positive behavior support ethics, Individual Support Plan (ISP) training, First Aid and CPR, an approved safety-intervention curriculum, disability awareness, and communication devices. The rule attaches no hour counts — compliance is tiered topic completion with documentation.

Ongoing obligations follow from the same structure: keeping CPR/First Aid and the safety-intervention credential current, refreshing ANE and rights knowledge, and — for medication-authorized staff — demonstrating proficiency annually.

Medication administration has its own rule, ARSD 46:11:07:07, and its design says a great deal about South Dakota's approach: unlicensed staff qualify through a 20-hour curriculum that the provider itself develops under registered nurse supervision and submits to the Division for approval, followed by annual proficiency checks. The state approves; it does not author.

Delivery model: South Dakota is an open-market state. No vendor or platform is named anywhere in rule. The Division's individualized supported employment (ISE) training memo mentions commercial platforms such as Relias and Open Future Learning as options, and explicitly treats alternatives as approvable — options, not mandates. Providers choose their training source for the core tiers, develop their own medication curriculum for Division approval, and select from approved safety-intervention curricula.

Training and eTracking Solutions provides online DSP training built for South Dakota's requirements — courses mapped to the ARSD 46:11:04:15.01 tier topics (ANE, rights, positive behavior support ethics, ISP, disability awareness, communication), automatic tracking of each staff member's pre-duty, 30-day, and 6-month deadlines, and documentation that stands up in Division certification reviews. For agencies building their 20-hour medication curriculum under RN supervision, TeTS's tracking layer keeps annual proficiency checks and every tier completion in one auditable record.