Direct Care Generalist Program

at LaGuardia Community College
and funded by the John F. Kennedy, Jr. Institute for Worker Education

Photo by André Beckles

The Direct Care Generalist (DCG) Program provides job-specific higher education and career development to frontline workers in health, education, and human service occupations. The program hopes to increase the retention of exemplary direct care workers, improve their job performance, and strengthen the quality of care received by consumers and their families.

The Direct Care Generalist (DCG) Program is a customized 5-course college training program: one non-credit preparatory Bridge course and four credit-bearing special topic classes. The special topic classes are Introduction to Developmental Disabilities, General Psychology, Principles of Behavior Management, and Foundations of Residential Services. All five courses link theory with practice by drawing upon the students‚ own work experience and a range of interdisciplinary academic works in the fields of psychology, human services, education, developmental disabilities, applied behavior analysis, and residential services.

This program also provides an opportunity for students to gain experience using computers. Our goal is to help students understand how computers can aid both their classroom and on the job learning, not to teach computer skills. The use of technology will be woven into the five courses in an incremental fashion; each class will build upon the technology introduced and used in the previous class. As students move through the sequence of courses, they will increase their technical skills and their understanding of how these skills can be used in further academic study and on their jobs.

Photo by André Beckles

Program graduates have:

Climbed the career ladder by receiving better salaries, pay increases, promotional opportunities, and other career incentives from their agencies.
Improved their job performance by gaining a deeper understanding of the psychological, social, education and physical challenges that affect the people with whom they work.
Moved closer to completing a degree by using the credits earned in the Direct Care Generalist Program towards a college degree