Provider webinar - How to use the toolkit - video transcript

Presenter: Sharon Floyd

12 October 2022

Welcome everybody. My name is Sharon Floyd and I'm here today with my co-facilitator Jen Engels to guide you through a series of webinars that are designed to help Residential Aged Care providers through the NDIS registration process. So, welcome Jen. Thanks Sharon and hello everyone. Sharon and I really hope that you find the resources that have been developed and also this webinar series useful. Thank you Jen. This particular webinar is designed to help you use, what's called the NDIS Residential Aged Care Provider Toolkit and when you actually have a look at the toolkit, you'll see that it comprises a range of various parts of key information that we'll look at in a sec. As well as, some tools and as the name suggests, the tools are sort of practical sort of resources that aren't mandatory but could certainly help you with your registration renewal.

So, the first part in the toolkit is part A and it actually includes a number of common terms that you'll hear about in the NDIS registration process and some of these terms are similar to aged care terms but do actually have a specific sort of NDIS sort of focus. So, for example in the aged care sector, you hear the term consumer commonly used. In the NDIS sector, the term that's used is participant, and we'll be using that term participant as we go through this series of webinars. You see on the slides, some other terms that are used and it's good to actually understand how they actually relate to the NDIS registration process.

Part B of the toolkit is the largest section in the toolkit and it's a really good way to actually dive in and get a really good understanding of the overall NDIS audit and registration process. It does also go into some detail about options available for Residential Aged Care providers that can ultimately sort of minimize some of the regulatory sort of inputs. So, for example there's information about how you can undertake a modified audit if an aged care audit has recently taken place.

There's also some useful information about the NDIS Practice Standards that will apply to Residential Aged Care providers and the key part of those practice standards that you'll need to be familiar with is something called the Core Module. And for some Residential Aged Care providers there may be some additional modules also relevant, that will depend upon the type of services and supports provided and you'll see there's something called Module 1 and Module 2A, that will, if you go back into that part B, you'll be able to find more information about what those supports are about. There's also a factsheet that summarises all of those 22 pages in Part B that provides you with a good snapshot of what you need to know.

Part C compares the aged care accreditation process to the NDIS audit and registration process and we've already discussed how there's some differences in terminology. You'll see in this section that there's also some differences in for example process. For NDIS audits, a provider can actually go and engage an audit body of your choice. As long as they've been accredited to conduct NDIS audits. Whereas in the Aged Care sector, you are appointed an assessor. There's also some differences in timing of audits. In the aged care sector an audit actually takes place a year after accreditation. Whereas in the NDIS process it actually has to happen well and truly before registration.

There are costs involved in the both aged care and NDIS sectors but different type of costs for different reasons. For aged care accreditation there's costs involved in actually applying. So, application and assessment fees. Whereas, in the NDIS process, you actually pay for the audit but there are no registration fees.

And what we mean about sites on this slide is that in the NDIS audits, there's a sample of sites that's included in an audit. Whereas for aged care audits there's an audit undertaken for each and every site of a particular organisation. Again, there's a fact sheet available that actually summarizes these differences.

Part D is basically the stepped out processes involved in NDIS audits and how it links to registration. We've included in part D some tips some tricks to actually help you through the registration process. So, the slide here actually spells out what those steps are and there's a separate webinar that actually provides more specific information and guidance about stepping you through those processes, and again there's a fact sheet again that's a good summary.

In Part E , this is a chance for you to actually see how similar the Aged Care Quality Standards are to the NDIS Practice Standards, and this comparison actually appears in something called a Standards Comparison tool where all of the NDIS Practice Standards appear and their related quality indicators. And you actually see when you look at this tool which of those quality indicators are either similar to aged care requirements, have some similarities, to aged care requirements, or are different, and for those quality indicators that represent  differences to aged care. Or where there's some similarities, they're ones that you probably need to spend a little bit more time thinking about in terms of the type of evidence that you would have in place to demonstrate that level of compliance. Again there's a fact sheet available that summarises this comparison.

Okay on this slide we just refer to the fact that we do actually have in the toolkit, Part F, a series of Frequently Asked Questions that have been pulled together from the feedback that the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission has received from the aged care sector. So, hopefully they'll help you in some of the more sort of common areas that you may be sort of concerned about, or have issues about in terms of registration and audit requirements. And Part G Glossary goes into more detail about the terminology that you're likely to hear about within NDIS registration and so more detail than the Part A document that we referred to before.

Jen's going to chat about Part H. Thanks Sharon. So, Part H is a Concordance Table and this is a tool or one of a couple of tools that's been developed as part of that Residential Aged Care Provider Toolkit. So, we have created a separate webinar on how to use the Concordance Table that steps you through that process. You're not required to use it, it's not mandatory it is something that may assist you and we would recommend that you use the tool when you are preparing your self-assessment and also when you're getting ready for your audit. It's actually also a great tool for ongoing continuous improvement and just a reminder that it isn't mandatory, it is something that may be beneficial to you. So, feel free to use it and take a look.

And Part I is an Evidence Guide. So, this is another tool that's been developed and again, there is a separate webinar taking you through the steps in terms of using that tool. The Evidence Guide is a guide and it steps through categories and sources of evidence that you already may have in place and it also has some suggestions for other types of evidence that you may like to consider. So, depending on  the extent of similarity between the Aged Care Standards and the NDIS Standards.

So, again we'd recommend that you have a look at that tool it will be really helpful for your self-assessment and certainly your audit process. The guide is just a guide, it's not prescriptive and it's not a list of evidence you must have and you certainly don't need to use it but we are confident it will add a lot of value to what you're doing.

Thanks Jen, and thanks everyone for listening and we hope you found this useful.