What are the key challenges support coordinators face (pain points or barriers to success) – and can you share your tips for navigating them?
MP – Ensuring all providers supporting a client remain client centred. Familiarise yourself with the NDIA legislation, rules and guidelines and always work in a way that the participant is at the centre of all decisions.
VS – The NDIA – not being notified of important meetings and planners not being prompt. Managing families of participants who disrupt plans and cause delays. Tip: remain patient.
AT – As mentioned, having to do other peoples’ work for them as they don’t follow through or are either lazy or incompetent to do the work, or they’re just purely in it for the money and not to help people. Although follow ups are part of the job, at times it’s highly frustrating and annoying because the work then doesn’t get done if it’s not constantly followed up more than once or twice.
Time constraints of course, and sourcing providers that are not money hungry and in it for the wrong reasons.
SG – Providers overspending on funds. Plan cuts, reports not read, assisting participants through the AAT. Death of a client, abuse and neglect.
You need to be thick skinned. Good time management skills are vital, and don’t take things to heart. Everyone makes mistakes, don’t lie, be honest to participants and families.
BREATHE
EH – In my experience there are two main challenges I face:
Communication – be it communication between you and the participant or their support; between services and participants; or between mainstream supports and everyone else.
The best tool for addressing this is to manage communication well, and there are a couple of tips for this:
The NDIS – Anyone in this industry knows how hard it can be to navigate the NDIS. That is why we are here – our job is to help everyone (including the NDIA workers) on the journey. The best methods to manage this include:
HR – The NDIA is the biggest challenge. The constant changing of rules, how difficult they make it to try to get the funding someone actually needs, how badly trained the call centre is, how badly trained the planners and LACs are (it ends up that you are telling them how to do their job), that they often don’t understand disability or the disability you are trying to explain to them, how difficult it is for a participant to navigate by themselves, that when a participant becomes homeless the NDIS can’t help and neither can mainstream supports, because the person has a disability.
Another challenge is the NDIA and some companies devaluing the role of support coordinators. The NDIA have often not seen the value in support coordinators and then don’t fund enough participants to have support coordination in their plan. Some companies believe that support coordination isn’t hard or that it isn’t a huge responsibility when it really is. How I navigate this is by being better and showing how important the support coordination role really is.
SH – Sourcing appropriate service providers that are a correct fit with the participant, write excellent reports and provide excellent care, without extended, long periods of time.
Plan managers who forget they are there to pay invoices, not stop participants accessing their funds.
Finding service providers that have appropriate ethics and not ‘in it for the money’. Many service providers have entered the industry with no previous experience.
ZD – The pain points/barriers include:
Communication is my key to navigating these support coordination pain points and/or barriers to success. I am a go-getter, so I like to get things done quickly for my clients. Due to this reason, when I come across a barrier I like to solve it on the spot by finding other avenues and thinking outside the box. I do not give up on solving problems and I always get a result one way or another, respectfully of course.
SC – Remote areas unable to engage with participants and providers not staying in the lane – wanting to put forward who they think would be the best to refer to.
