Pathways / Verification Overview
The NDIS wants to know that you:
The Code of Conduct also requires providers to “respect the privacy of people with a disability” and “provide supports and services in a safe and competent manner”.
Auditors want to see:
The Risk Management Policy documents the rules and systems your business uses to identify and manage risks to your participants, yourself as the provider and anyone you have working for you. It includes:
The Risk Management Policy demonstrates your business is operating in line with the NDIS Code of Conduct, in particular “Provide supports and services in a safe and competent manner with care and skill”.
They can:
This policy shows the auditors you try to provide a safe environment for your participants, visitors, yourself as the provider and anyone you have working with you. It outlines the system you have in place to protect participants, yourself and those you have working for you from injury and the spread of infection.
For those of you working in the community you need to recognise the extra challenges of providing a safe environment and managing the risks.
This document is the key document addressing the ‘Emergency and disaster management and related matters’ changes introduced during 2021 in response to the COVID pandemic. You need to make sure the ways of working suggested in this document are relevant to your work environment, the services you provide and types of participants you work with. When using this document to address these aspects please note:
They can:
We all manage risks every day (wear a seatbelt, safeguard client privacy, watch for traffic, reduce risk of falls for our clients). This document is about showing you have more formally assessed risks and put in place strategies to adequately minimise risks.
A risk matrix can help with risk management (a sample is at the end of the Risk Management Register). Matrices allow you to assess the probability and consequence of any given risk and give a rating of how high or low the risk is. You can also use the matrix to assess the level of risk if you had no strategies in place (initial risk rating) and then assess the ‘residual’ risk with your current strategies in place. This will indicate if you have sufficient strategies in place or if you need to do more to adequately manage your risk.
This will provide you with one place to record any risk you identify in your business and outline how you manage the risk.
This document demonstrates you are providing services in line with the NDIS Code of Conduct, specifically “provide supports and services in a safe and competent manner with care and skill”.
They can:
Ensuring you comply with the Principles of the Privacy Act 1988 and its subsequent amendments is mandatory when dealing with NDIS participants’ personal information. Some states (NSW, VIC) and territories (ACT) have additional legislative requirements.
Anyone providing services to NDIS participants also needs to do so according to the NDIS Code of Conduct – specifically you are obliged to “respect the privacy of people with disability”.
While this policy is not a strict requirement for Verification it is good practice as it helps demonstrate your compliance with the above. The policy outlines your understanding of your responsibilities and how you go about maintaining privacy not only of your NDIS participants but also other clients and staff.
Cyber security is an important consideration for both small and larger organisations, recommended reading is Essential 8 Cyber Mitigation Strategies, one really easy recommendation to implement is multi-factor authentication.
They can see:
Working in the community and working in isolation poses risks to you, your workers and participants and their support network. This checklist provides a list of things to consider to assist with everyone’s safety when working in the community. It can be used as a quick reference guide to help workers ensure they are following all processes and procedures.
Remember, it needs to be read and used in conjunction with the Safe Practice and Environment Policy.
This is a key document to demonstrate evidence you are complying with the Safe Environment legislative changes made in 2021 with the introduction of Emergency and disaster management and related matter requirements.
They can see:
This is a checklist which serves two purposes:
If something were to ever go wrong, you will be able to show your insurer you had a system in place whereby you took the time to undertake regular safety inspections.
This is a key document to demonstrate evidence you are complying with the Safe Environment legislative changes made in 2021 with the introduction of Emergency and disaster management and related matter requirements.
They can see:
This document is designed to ensure (and provide evidence) that you are doing what you say you are doing in your Service Delivery Model and policies.
It is designed to keep you and the participant focused on what the participant wants to achieve and how you will allocate their resources to assist them with meeting their goals.
When completing the NDIS Support Plan do not leave any fields blank, if there is nothing to note write ‘nil identified’ to clearly demonstrate the relevant factor has been considered.
As noted within Incident Management – Service Agreement, depending on the type of services you provide, participants you work with and systems within your workplace, it may be more applicable to use the Service Agreement document and/or other documents and systems included in this risk management section for some of the information contained in this Support Plan. It is therefore critical you consider this document in conjunction with your Service Agreement as the two need to be complementary to ensure all relevant pieces of information for compliance with registration requirements are included.
For example, the guidelines indicate the risk assessment information should be recorded in the support plan – however, we are aware of some providers who have successfully combined the support plan and service agreement information to reduce documentation. You should carefully consider the below requirements as per the guidelines and determine where these aspects fit best within the system you are using and the way you document information and share with participants and their support networks to ensure everyone is aware of what should occur in these situations should they arise:
“In collaboration with each participant:
(a) risk assessments are regularly undertaken, and documented in their support plans; and
(b) appropriate strategies are planned and implemented to treat known risks to them.
(2A) Risk assessments include the following:
(a) consideration of the degree to which participants rely on the provider’s services to meet their daily living needs;
(b) the extent to which the health and safety of participants would be affected if those services were disrupted.
9) Each participant’s support plan:
(a) anticipates and incorporates responses to individual, provider and community emergencies and disasters to ensure their safety, health and wellbeing; and
(b) is understood by each worker supporting them.
(5) Service agreements set out the arrangements for providing supports to be put in place in the event of an emergency or disaster.
These requirements were included in the legislative changes related to Emergency and disaster management. Therefore, it is critical you can demonstrate where the following is addressed in your system if not using this document:
They can see:
One of the risks providers accept is that their services will not assist the participant to achieve their goals. This activity also assists with demonstrating your ‘competence’ as per the NDIS Code of Conduct.
This is an Excel spreadsheet to assist you to determine how many of your participants’ ‘intervention goals’ have been achieved, and the reasons why any were not achieved. Knowing why goals are not achieved will assist you to improve your practice.
The Excel document attached has formula inserted into the fields to assist you to quickly undertake a quality improvement (QI) activity. There is sample data inserted into the spreadsheet to show you how it works.
The source data you will need to collect is on your participants’ NDIS Support Plan.
Unless you have been collecting your goal attainment outcomes in a way that can be readily accessed, you may need to wait until you have used the NDIS Support Plan we have provided to complete this audit.
It is very difficult in small services to get ‘statistical level samples’. For a small practice (2-3 allied health professionals (AHPs)), we suggest a sample size of 10 randomly selected participants’ information per AHP in your team will be enough to give you a feel how effective your services are. If you have 6 AHPs then 3 x 10 will probably alert you to any trends. If you do this once a year and take note of any shifts in your general outcomes you should have confidence your services are on track.
They can see:
NDIS need to know you have appropriate insurances in place, including:
They can see:
The ‘spiel’ is the text you will insert when completing the self-assessment to apply for registration via the Commission’s portal. You will need to have confirmed your ways of working, which documents you will utilise and what you will call them before completing this ‘spiel’ so do this task last in each section.
