Support coordination – the delicate art of balance – Q1

Panel members

• Elizabeth Hickey (EH) – Support Coordinator, AFA Support Coordination
• Sera CrichtonAita (SC) – Support Coordinator, Australian Regional & Remote Community Services
• Kate Read (KR) – Founder/CEO, Inspires & Co
• Zena Dyson (ZD) – Specialist Support Coordinator/Team Leader, Esteem Care Services
• Danni Bament (DB) – Managing Director, Aspire Recovery Connection

Support coordinators play a pivotal role in the lives of NDIS participants – including as a conduit between their clients and the NDIA. How do you navigate that role, and stay on top of an ever-changing regulatory landscape, to ensure the best possible outcomes for your clients while also maintaining your professional standing as an NDIS-funded provider?

EH – As an NDIS registered provider, I have the requirement to participate in ongoing ‘continuous improvement’. This includes both business practice improvement and improvement and engagement with the ongoing changes. There are a number of different things that go into ensuring you stay up to date and are across the ever-changing rules, including:

1. Networking – support coordinators should not be in competition. There is a lot of work to go around and through good networking and working together, different providers/workers can utilise information and experiences from different locations.
   
2. Have a speciality or specialties – one way to be able to stay across all the information is to specialise your support coordination practice. Focus your work on one group of people and don’t try to be the support coordinator for all. I have about five specific groups of people I work with – they range in age and disability, however they have a number of similarities. By having a specific group to work with, I can be an expert and stay across the changes that happen easily.
   
3. Participate in ongoing training – it doesn’t have to be paid. There are a huge number of different training sessions happening regularly – NDIA offered sessions, local area sessions, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission sessions, speciality groups etc.
   
4. Be on all the mail groups and read your emails. You don’t need to go in depth on a change but being aware that the change has happened and where to find the more in depth information if you need it is important.
   
5. Join an appropriate association – be that NDS, NDP, ACWS, AASW or similar – and utilise the benefits that membership gives, such as meetings, discounted training, access to resources and networking opportunities, as they’re all beneficial.
   
6. Know that there are times when you will not be working for money. The NDIS pay rate theoretically includes a component that should allow for a worker to do non fee generating work – e.g., training and administration.

SC – Focus on their goals with the NDIS plan, always have them contribute to the decision making. Surround the activities on the capacity building for their independence.

KR – It’s an extremely difficult landscape to navigate. I try and be supportive and hands on for my team but also have very firm boundaries. Generally, the NDIS do not have the participant’s best interests at heart, so we make sure we do

ZD – While keeping in mind the rules and regulations of the NDIA and explaining the NDIA’s decisions to our participants and/or their primary carers, I always stand with the participant and their best interests. I am in contact with the NDIA regularly, almost daily, pushing for the best possible outcomes for our participants – respectfully of course.

DB – I always keep in mind that support coordination is a capacity building support. While it’s incredibly useful to have NDIS knowledge and experience up my sleeve, I would say that the main part of my role isn’t just to navigate the NDIS – it’s to support the person I’m working with to gain power over their NDIS experience.

As soon as I start believing that I’m an expert, I’m blocking off opportunities to be flexible and keep up with changes, and to really understand the perspective of the person I’m working with.

A lot of the time I am going through the process of keeping up with NDIS regulations together with the person I’m working with. Whether I’m well-acquainted with these things or not, my knowledge can actually be counterproductive if it means I’m taking away a person’s opportunity to see that they can take control of their NDIS journey for themselves.

There are certain aspects of the role that are part and parcel of being an NDIS provider. Writing reports at the end of the plan, and requesting changes to the plan as needed, are highly structured and regulated processes. I believe that there are opportunities to make all of these parts of the process not just inclusive, but truly centred around the person as much as possible. For example, our end of plan report is structured a lot like an interview, which allows the report to be expressed in the person’s own words – as feedback on the NDIS experience and the narrative of a person’s own recovery journey should be!

Click here for question 2.