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 ‘spiel’ is the text you will use in the body of your NDIS registration application. You need to understand it and change it if you are not able to do what it says.
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.
For those of you working in the community you need to recognise the extra challengers of providing a safe environment and managing the risks.
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 and your workers.
This checklist provides you with a list of things to consider to assist with your safety when working in the community. Remember, it needs to be read and used in conjunction with the Safe Practice and Environment Policy.
They can see:
This is a checklist to enable you to conduct your own safety inspections. The checklist provides you with a list of things to consider to help make your working environment safe for you, your participants, anyone working for you, and visitors.
If something was ever to 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.
They can see:
This is a vital document to embrace! It provides evidence you are doing what you say you are doing in your Service Delivery Model and policies.
Every field on the NDIS Support Plan is there for a reason. When completing the NDIS Support Plan do not leave any fields blank as it will look like you have just left it out. If there are no cultural considerations or risks say ‘nil identified’. Completing the form fully will help with the completion of any future quality audits – including the Goal Attainment QI Activity that we will introduce next.
The participant’s NDIS Service Agreement refers to their Support Plan for a breakdown of costs, you can think of this as a ‘quote’. Some providers choose to have the full breakdown of costs in the Service Agreement – that is OK but remember you will need to issue a full new Service Agreement every time you update their Support Plan. We suggest you reference the current Support Plan as the detailed quote.
It is not the intention of the Support Plan to summarise the participant’s clinical assessment. Remember it is to keep you and the participant focused on the what the participant wants to achieve and how you will allocate their resources to meet their goals.
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 Document Control Register helps you to manage policies, forms and assessments and ensures you are working on the most recent edition (not a photocopy of some form that is three years out of date!).
It is not an absolute requirement but auditors’ feedback is that it is very good idea. Having this register and keeping it up to date will really help with your next audit. It gives you a comprehensive list of all your QMS documents for audit. This not only means you can easily check if documents are up to date, but the auditor can see what documents you have and can readily request them as needed. It saves a lot of time at audit (and likely some cost).
To make this system work you need to make sure you:
If there is more than one person on your team, the Document Control Register becomes more important as it will assist all providers to be using the correct form. This is good practice for all documents but critical for documents you give your participants (e.g. Service Agreement and Support Plans) as these need to comply with NDIS Rules and Terms of Business (which tend to change).
The Register enables a provider on your team to register a document and have it available to all your team members. This will provide consistency across your team and prevent providers reinventing forms that already exist.
They love registers!
They can see:
