Direct Service Careers provide quality support to adults and children with substances/alcohol issues, with developmental disabilities, with chronic illness and aging, people who experience mental illness, children & youth diagnosed SED (Severely Emotionally Disturbed), someone who has incurred a brain injury, and individuals with co-occurring disorders who need help in order to be self-sufficient.

If you love helping others, make it a career….

When people in direct service professions, are asked why they do the jobs they do…the usual answer is because they love helping people. If you want to see if you have the qualities necessary to make direct service a career, check out the list of qualities (PDF format) that are needed for all the jobs.

Still Reading?

You must be caring, mature, responsible, and wanting to help others reach their full capacity! Now, the question is what job do you want? Luckily, we have many jobs available and the level of training needed varies greatly.

• Some jobs, such as individual support specialist, offer to train you on the job. For these, you can check out these fact sheets or go directly to the job bank.
• Other jobs, (e.g., certified nurse assistant and personal care attendant, chemical dependency counselor) require additional training that is offered by community providers and/or Universities. Visit our training page for more information on training offered in Alaska for these jobs.
• Still other jobs, both paraprofessional and professional level jobs, require University certificates or degrees. There is also information on training available for these jobs on our training page.