Direct support professional training in Texas is regulated by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) through the program rules for the Home and Community-based Services (HCS) and Texas Home Living (TxHmL) waivers — 26 TAC Chapter 263 for program requirements and Chapter 565 for provider certification standards, with §565.7 carrying the core staff-training obligations. Together they cover the largest IDD waiver provider base in the country.

Unlike Louisiana or Illinois, Texas mandates no statewide hour count for core DSP training. The requirements are functional. First, every staff member must complete abuse, neglect, and exploitation training, including one hour on reporting to DFPS: providers may use HHSC's free ANE Competency Training course (passing at 80%) or deliver their own provider-developed ANE training — the rule explicitly permits either. Second, staff must complete individual-specific training before serving a person — the person's plan, support needs, and any specialized procedures — and repeat it every 12 months with observed competency confirmation, which makes the annual cycle a demonstrated-skill event rather than a sign-off.

Person-centered practice has its own requirement: staff providing Community First Choice PAS/HAB services must complete HHSC's approved online Introduction to Person-Centered Planning within 90 days. And staff who implement behavior support fall under HHSC's behavioral-support policy training, renewed on a three-year cycle.

Medication administration in HCS is often misunderstood: there is no medication-aide certification in the HCS program. Unlicensed staff administer medications under RN delegation per the Texas Nurse Practice Act — the Chapter 557 medication aide permit applies to ICF/IID facility settings, not HCS community services. Providers should therefore build medication competency as nurse-delegated training and documentation, not as a certification course.

Delivery is fully open. Texas providers choose their own training sources for everything except a handful of short, free HHSC modules (the ANE competency course option and the person-centered planning introduction), and even ANE explicitly permits a provider-developed alternative. There is no state platform, no curriculum lock, and no course-approval process — the compliance question in an HHSC survey is whether your records show the right training happened on the right cycle with competency observed.

Training and eTracking Solutions provides online DSP training built for Texas's HCS and TxHmL requirements — ANE and rights coursework mapped to the §565.7 and Chapter 263 requirements, scaffolding for documenting individual-specific training and the annual observed-competency renewal, pointers to the required HHSC modules where the state course is the natural choice, and automatic tracking of every staff member's 12-month and 3-year cycles so documentation stands up in HHSC certification reviews.