Engaging Suppport Workers under the ndis

 Every family and participant has the right to decide . . . 

 who comes into their home and who they 

trust to support them in the community.

So your new to receiving supports for your disability or a family member. You've just recieved your ndis plan and you have x dollars to spend on direct support. Where do you start?

Choose the types of direct supports you want?

• Respite support
• Day respite support
• Day activities support
• Social support in a group
• Social support one-on-one
• Community Access Support
• In-home Support
• Job coaching/Support
• Personal Care
• Transport

If your new to being able to access supports chances are you may not know what all the different types of support are and there are supports not listed here.  In your planning meeting you would of set your goals. This is the first clue to the type of support you might like to access. Let's look at these:-

1. Respite Support: This gives a full-time carer a break from providing care for someone. This support may occur in the home allowing the care givers some time out. In a day activity centre where the person with a disability does a number of activities in a group setting or a period where the person has a home away from home, the family might take a holiday during this time.
2. Respite Care Settings/Day Centre or Group Based Activities: These are where a number of people with disabilities are supported to do things together. Things like shopping, sports, physical activities, drama, arts & crafts, life skills and social activities.
3. In-home Supports: This might include assistance with daily living tasks such as showering and dressing, meal preparation, light house work, gardening or just things you enjoy doing at home. 
4. Community Access Support: This is where an individual support worker supports one individual to do things in their local community.  Things such as getting to and from school and work, attending medical appointments, attending mainstream groups such as guides, art and crafts groups, playing sports, attending a gym, swimming, doing things of interest to you, shopping, going to have a hair cut, going to the pub, attending a wedding, visiting a theme park or national park.  Basically this includes any activity your peers would enjoy.
5. Social Support:  This may occur individually or in a group - the choice is yours.  Some participants may use their social support to improve their socal skills or make new friends.  Some might choose to attend a social activity in a group organised by a disability support agency or they might have one on one support to go on a day trip or to the markets.  A popular type of social support activity is to attend a movie or go to a football game.  Social support includes any type of activity people do for enjoyment.
6. Job Support: This is support to find a job, to get to and from work, do some work experience, or assistance looking for work.

Hopefully this gives you some ideas of the types of activities you might like support to do.  Your choice of activities will come from your ndis plan goals, such as assistance to get your child to and from school. This may involve having assistance with getting your child dressed, feeding your child breakfast and putting them on the school bus or in a taxi.

At the time of your meeting with the planner you are asked how you want your plan to be managed.  Setting up the adminstration of your plan is the first step, as you can not access a service for support until you know what you ndis budget looks like.

The three basic choices were:- 

• ndis plan managed
• Host fund provider
• Self-managed

This choice will influnece how you engage your support workers.  Within these three choices their are a number of variations and each variation will enable you to engage your support workers in different ways. Regardless of how your plan is administrated every participant can engage support workers through a Disability Support Provider. 

However if your plan is ndis managed, then the only way you can access support workers is through an ndis registered plan provider. Traditionally this means that you could not self-direct and engage your own staff. However this is no longer true. There are now ndis disability support providers who assist you to directly engage workers.  See services like Mable and Hire Up. 

If you engage a third party to manage your package you have a choice on whether that provider supplies direct support staff or a different provider.  I have previously shared the pro and cons of accessing one provider to provide all your support needs (Choosing a support service) - You may find you are able to self-direct or partially self-direct your support staff using a host funds provider. 

For those who are able to self-manage their plan there is more flexibility. You are not limited to a ndis provider for your support service, you may like to access a cleaning service to clean the house, a home maintenance service and a food preparation company to cook.  Some people like the simplicity of having workers who can support them to do all tasks, while other engage workers that are skilled in specific areas.  It very much depends on your support needs and lifestyle. 

I personally work best with people who have a creative interest. They do not need to be artists like myself, they might show their creativity in other ways such as gardening. I find workers who do not share a creative interest do not enjoy working with me as much as workers who are creative.

So now you need to start thinking about the type of person who you would enjoy working with.  If you are wanting a support worker to support you to go swimming, you don't want a coach potato or someone who can't swim.  The coach poato might be great to go to the movies or the pub or even to do arts and craft. This is where deciding if you want a support worker for a specfic task or you want general workers to support you in a numbers of ways.

Regardless of how you access support from a support worker or a carer you will find that some support workers are selective with the type of supports they provide. (This occurs both with disability support organisations and workers you may seek to directly engage or employ). For example some support staff will not assist with personal care or transport you in their car. So you need to be very specific about the type of support you're seeking and the tasks required.  Some people will agree to anything, hoping to persuade you to do what they want to do later.

If you are self-directing your own supports you will need to develop job description(s). Some people like their workers to do all the roles or tasks they require, while other participants seek support workers to support with a particular part of their plan.

I also partially self-manage my own plan.  I engage support workers through an online platform that links participants and support workers, then they negotiate an arrangement between themselves. The workers are officially employed by this ndis registered organisation, so no matter how your plan is managed you change choose your own support team and effectively be self-directing or directing for a family member.

I have one key worker who assist me with self managing a team and looks after the roster, another member of the team looks after all the team training and updating my support plan and induction guide.  My key worker also assists me in recruiting new team members and management of all my ndis supports.  Although I can do this phone calls are diffcult due to my speech impairment.  It is quicker and easier to have her negotiate all my service agreements for me to approve and sign.

Other participants have support workers who just assist them in the home and then a team of workers who assist them to do different activities in the community.  You need to consider your lifestyle and your needs when you select how to structure your support team.  You can also ask for assistance to organise your supports in your plan.

At this stage you need to begin to develop a detailed support plan that spells out all your support needs, your expectations of support workers, an explanation of all tasks required, including descriptions and any specialised plans the support workers are required to follow, such as your personal care routine, medical emergency response plans and behaviour management plans.  If you have a supports coordinator or a coordinator through the disability support agency you have a service agreement with they will either write your support plan or work with you to write the plan.

For those who are self-directing through an agency, you will be able to access their templates to write your support plan.   These support plans form part of the service agreement or employment agreement you and the other party sign.  These are legally binding documents that all workers must follow.  They are not negotiable by individual workers, they are not guidelines and they certainly are not suggestions of how a worker provides supports.  If the unfortunate happens and an incident arises, if plans have not been followed workers may find the cannot claim work cover or sue in event of injury.

On that note if you are directly employing your own support team as an employer you are responsible to insure your own staff and ensure all entitlements are paid.  You can check these with employers services and the award.  The other way to directly engage workers is to pay or contract support workers who are self-employed and are responsible for their own insurances and taxation requirements.

Just an overview of how support workers can be engaged or employed:-

• Employed by a disability support organsiation that is ndis registered. A list of these are on the ndis website or you can ask your Local Area Coordinator to assist. 
• Work for an agency that supplies support staff to participants who are self-directing. 
• Work with a self-directing service to set up your own model for self-directing and engaging support staff.
• Employ support workers who are self-employed (have an ABN)
• Set-up your own service to employ your staff.  (apply for an ABN)

Another option that I have used is to engaged a number of different staff through different providers. This gives you more options and a wider pool to select your workers from.  Remember you have the right to withdraw from a service agreement, as long as you follow the terms for withdrawal in the service agreement. 

I have previously written blog posts explaining the purpose of service agreements, what they should contain and your rights. see Planning your ndis pathways.

So to find the right worker for you, you need:

1. A list of required supports.
2. How you will engage your support workers
3. Service agreement(s) or prepared employment agreements
4. A support plan
5. Job description(s)
6. Induction plan and/or staff training manuals 
7. A list of skills and qualities you are looking for in a support worker. (If you are advertising for a support worker or using a recuriment agency, include these in the advertisement)

The journey begins . . . 

Here are some tools

Things to include in your support plan

• Information about you (or the participants)- what daily life looks like, the activities you engage in, and your hobbies and interests including family members and emergency contacts.
• Information on your (or participants) disability and health conditions that will assist workers to deliver quality support.
• A skills audit - Something that clearly states where you (or the participant) can do or can't do and how support is needed. Some things I include are mobility, communication, medical summary, epilepsy support plan, emergency response plans, tasks list for in-home support, personal care plan and procedures, guidelines for community access.)
• Staff team culture
• Induction plan
• Training requirements.  

The clearer this can be, the less room for applicants to misunderstand the requirements and responsibilities of their role.  Signing and employment agreement means agreeing to follow the support plan.  My experience is staff interpret this document to suit themselves so the person responsible for coordinating supports needs to be firm.

Writing a Job Description

This will be needed if you are recruiting your own team members or placing a job on an online platform. When I began self-directing my own team I used a recruitment agency. I find there are loads of people looking for support work, particually students needing causal work. However, you want to ensure this person is a good fit for you or the participants needs and lifestyle!

Include a job title.  I intitally advertised for two postitions a Key Support Worker and a casual worker.  I found in being flexible in my recuriting I altered the job descriptions I offered to the successfully candidates.  Posting a 'job' on an online platform is a bit different as some of the screening is done for you.  Such as police and reference checks.  (Oh I never give out my address until I am sure I want this person in my home. It's find it good to meet the person in a park or library.)

I like to do my meet and greets in the community at The Retro Diner.  As I provide artwork for the diners walls.  It enbles the interested party to see the level of my artwork and veiw me in a working enviroment.

So you need to include:

• Job title
• Summary of duties
• Something about the type of person your looking for
• Any requirements such as a blue and yellow card, qualifications, 2 referees and a willingness to drive your own car. 
• I include I have a cat at work so workers with an allergy to cats are not suited to working with me.

 Something I might put on a online platform, or I even used successfully on Facebook is:

Crazy art loving cat women seeks casual support workers to complete her current support team.  To be suitable you need to be flexible with your work hours and have great availablity.  This postition will include work after 5 pm and on the weekends. 

I require assistance with housework, personal care, meal preparation, my physio program, shopping and growing my visual arts practise.  If you a crazy and love to laugh while your working; and can prove to me your loyal and reliable then message me to discuss my needs futher.  

Someone with a sense of homour or witty in important to me as I am a true larkin'. If this was a job add I be a lot more descriptived in the personal qualities I looking for.  I looking for someone who wants to get the job done and empower me to achieve my ndis goals, not take me out for coffee.  Although occasionally I like to do that to.   I have plenty of friends and I don't pay them buy the hour get me out the house. 

What is a service agreement?

Put simply it is an agreement or contract between you and the organisation or person you are engaging to provide your support. It states the specfic supports that will be provided and the costs of those supports (quote).  It outlines their responsibilites to you and your responsibilites to them for an agreed period of time.  It should also spell out the terms for seazing the agreement before the due date.

Although the agreement can be reviewed at anytime at the request of either party or termeniated imediately if either party acts concere to the terms and conditions. You do not need to have a 12 month agreement, it can be for any period of time and if you are new to recieving support I would recommend a short period between 8 to 12 weeks.