Certification Pathway Overview

The background discussed here and how to use this resource is explained verbally and in more detail in the Overview Webinar 2023.  

The Commission have set out the registration requirements in a manner which allows you to demonstrate you meet the requirements in a variety of ways. This means:  

• There is no right or wrong way of meeting the requirements  
• You can work in ways specific to the needs of your business and clients   
• But there are baseline requirements which must be incorporated into your policies and ways of working and you need to be careful to not adjust the resources provided here to exclude these aspects  
• The focus of an audit is on ensuring the intended outcomes are being achieved for your business and the participant’s you provide services to   
• This method may result in differences between auditor assessments.  

For auditors to assess whether your business meets the requirements under such a model, you need to provide evidence that not only are there policies and processes in place but these are:  

• Understood by you and your staff  
• Used by you and your staff  
• Part of a system you use to continually inform the way you provide services and conduct your business.  

This means it is critical you:  

• Understand the resources before you use them  
• You consider them a baseline and adjust them to your specific business practices  
• Educate your staff regarding the location, reasoning and use of the documents and processes put in place  
• Can demonstrate you are doing what you say you do with evidence that processes and policies are in use and you’ve evaluated whether they are having the desired impact on business and participant outcomes  
• Can demonstrate changes you are making to your business and services are informed by the objective outcomes generated by the evaluation system you’ve put in place.   

Typically, a ‘desk-top’ audit of the evidence you have presented to auditors will be conducted initially and then an onsite or more visual audit will be arranged for a Certification registration. Auditors are also likely to want to talk with your staff to verify they are aware of and know how to use your systems, have access to documents, have participated in training etc. Auditors will question individual staff members about training they have received so having ‘key points’ for each topic is also useful evidence you can have and can be used as a refresher for staff prior to audit. 

Remember that this suite of documents are just one way to set up a Quality Management System to assist you to easily manage compliance with these and other regulatory requirements across all the different systems you work within. There are some great technical options to explore if you want to use them or already are, however, always consider when choosing and implementing how you will demonstrate your ways of working to an auditor as part of a desk-top audit. 

You may also wish to utilise this resource to refer to as another way to prompt your thinking re ways to meet the Standards and provide evidence if the case study examples included within the documents we’ve provided are not applicable to the types of services you provide: https://www.nds.org.au/images/resources/NDIS-Practice-Standards-Interpretive-Guide_singlepages.pdf  

Step 1: Access a copy of the NDIS Practice Standards: Verification Module – Required Documentation September 2021 and the NDIS Practice Standards and Quality Indicators November 2021 Version 4  *You’ll need the Verification module to help with some of the HRM aspects which relate to all providers and are only available here. 

Step 2: Watch the revised overview webinar to give you key contextual information and help to navigate this site.

Step 3: Use the Document Control Register – this is an overview of what you are developing for your organisation’s internal system – to form a checklist as you work your way through the resources.

Step 4: Begin working through the resources within each of the 4 tiles below.  

We have provided resources in line with the 4 over-arching areas required within the Certification module Core standards.  

Each area has the following sections:  

Section overview  

• Explains why you need to complete the documents in that module and what the auditors will be looking for.  

List of documents  

• Documents may also have their own introduction outlining why you need the document, why the auditors like it and some potentially helpful hints on how to use it or customise it for your business  
• There are a lot of documents associated with some of the Certification modules. For that reason, the first two Certification modules (Rights and Responsibilities, Governance and Operational Management) have a side menu that breaks down the list of documents you will need to complete into sub-sections 
• Each document can be downloaded so you can review and customise it as necessary to reflect your business practices and incorporate into any already existing systems and processes 

When customising documents, keep the following in mind:  

• You will need to review the whole document to make sure it applies to you, however, key areas of focus for review, confirmation and/or adaption are highlighted in yellow  
• Adapt titles and wording for your organisation, for example you may wish to change the following terms we have used:  
• ‘AHP’, ‘practitioner’ or ‘provider’ to represent you or people in your team  
• ‘director’ to refer to the most senior person in your organisation  
• ‘staff’ to represent people you employ  
• ‘participant’, which is an NDIS term, to refer to people you provide services to 
• Insert your business/company name throughout the document 
• Use the document footer to show the date your document was created or updated on and indicate ‘Page x of y’.  

The Spiel 

• Contains the text you will insert when you are completing the self-assessment for your registration application via the NDIS Commissions portal.   
• The Spiel is intentionally short and refers to the documents you will attach to your application.   
• The Spiel links all relevant parts of your business and the quality management system you’re developing to the Module and Standards requirements so the auditors can see an overview of where in your system they will find evidence related to each of the different requirements.   
• As with all documents provided, you will need to customise this to reflect your processes and practices accurately and therefore it is recommended you do this as the last task within each section once your processes and document titles are confirmed.   
• *Please Note: Spiels have not been updated within this Certification pathway and contain the NDIS Commissions Quality Standards at the beginning of these documents. This means this information is from the previous version of the standards and not the current. Therefore, if you would like to include the standard within your documents you will need to update this section to the new version of the standards.