Case Studies: Examples of Best Practice Experienced by NDIS Participants
This resource has been developed through a co-design process with NDIS Participants. These case studies focus on NDIS Participants’ individual experiences of service delivery.
Topic 3: Core Practice Standards and the NDIS Code of Conduct
NDIS Providers find compliance with the NDIS Practice Standards and NDIS Code of Conduct much simpler when they enact their obligations on a day-to-day basis. NDIS Participants also have an important role to play in contributing to better service delivery.
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- NDIS participants contribute to making our service delivery better every day, every single day. ‘Cause it’s about that conversation. And that’s one of the things that the safeguarding and structures can give you in terms of if you’ve got that mindset of continually developing, you have a better conversation with your clients. So it is about developing their capacity to contribute as well. And so every day, it’s like well, does that work for you? Could we do that better? Could we do that another way? So I think it’s really concrete in terms of practice.
- An NDIS participant can contribute to a better NDIS service delivery by sharing their experiences, by not being afraid to share their stories, both the ones that didn’t go quite well, which were a learning curve, and the ones that went really well and what you learned from that, and what you’ve achieved from those two different experiences around your goals and dreams. What have you received because you’ve shared your experiences?
- I think NDIS participants can contribute to make sure that their service delivery is the best quality that they can get on a regular basis. They should absolutely be part of the conversation from the beginning, right through to their service delivery. So that’s from the planning session, right through to talking to their local area coordinators, and then their service providers about what they want their day, week, month to look like. So that can be done in a number of different ways. It can be fed back, depending on their communication style. So it’s super important for organizations to have a varied level of communication and tools available for their participants. But that could be at team meetings, often in accommodation that’s fed through during their meetings where they’re having interviews and question time with the participants about what they want their week to look like.
- NDIS participants can contribute to better service delivery by offering us their feedback. So whether that’s positive feedback on something that we’ve done really well, or if it’s negative feedback about something that we could have done better, we welcome those opportunities because feedback is actually an opportunity to improve our service delivery.
- Well, I mean there’s the kind of practical things that we could do, participate in audits and contribute to the design, the frameworks and so on.
- So I think that they can contribute to service delivery by making sure that if something’s not right that they find their voice to speak up and let people know what they’re, firstly, liking about the services, but perhaps what they’re not liking. But also sometimes there’s services that just aren’t in place in your area. So you could go and ask an organization about what you’d like to see. What are some of the things you’d like to be doing? How would you like those services to look?
- We put the practice standards under the NDIS into our everyday working life, particularly around policies and procedures. So those policies and procedures are there to protect the staff as well as the participants. So we have a… Annual Low is our organizational backend. So basically any support worker or any person inside our business can access that on their smart phone. We also make sure that incidents are reported and carefully reviewed as well. So it’s okay to have the incident come through, but then you wanna do the review process and make sure. How can we do things differently or what would we do different next time? So that’s rung through one of our risk management systems and that is a reporting platform, I guess, that we use on a regular basis. We can review that in live time, so we can see that of any matter, of any day. So that’s one of the ways that we make sure that we put those practices into place.
- Having quality practice in every day is really important. Being able to demonstrate it in an audit is also important, but it’s more important that you have the attitude right from the top that what you do every day has to be quality and safe. We make sure that we speak with clients and staff regularly about those things. We have weekly audits that are done from somebody who’s internal but not part of the team to try and make sure that everybody understands that things need to be up to date. We generally have a concept of continuous quality improvement across the organization, and that’s not a hard thing to do. There’s a lot of information online about it that we’ve used, and also attended some workshops that relate to the Plan, Do, Study, Act cycle to try and make change and improvements.
- We implement the practice standards into our everyday practice by liaising with employees and participants on a regular basis via meetings, emails, phone calls. We respect our participants’ rights and responsibilities. We have regular stakeholder meetings ensuring our participants feel safe, both in home and in the community.
- NDIS providers implement the practice standards into our everyday working life by ensuring that we start with the participant outcomes first, and then we build our policies and procedures around what those outcomes might be. And that way, we can ensure a quality service delivery as well as a safe service delivery.
Topic Overview
The Core Practice Standards and the NDIS Code of Conduct are an important benchmark for NDIS Providers to ensure high quality and safe supports are delivered to NDIS Participants. They also help NDIS Participants to gauge an NDIS Provider’s standard of service delivery.
Applying the requirements of the NDIS Practice Standards and NDIS Code of Conduct in everyday practice makes compliance with NDIS obligations easier. It supports ongoing continuous improvement, helps make audit easier and most importantly, ensures best practice services are delivered to NDIS Participants consistently.
Engaging NDIS Participants in service planning, design, delivery and evaluations is essential to good NDIS compliance practices.
True person-centred support can only be achieved when service delivery is based on what NDIS Participants want and need. The resources provided below discuss different ways NDIS Participants can be actively included in their service provision.
Participation in quality audits is a valuable way for NDIS Participants to engage with and contribute to better service delivery.
NDIS quality audits don’t need to be daunting for NDIS Providers or NDIS Participants. However, it is important that NDIS Providers know how to best prepare for an audit and that NDIS Participants know how and why they may be involved.
The Core Practice Standards and the NDIS Code of Conduct are an important benchmark for NDIS Providers to ensure high quality and safe supports are delivered to NDIS Participants. They also help NDIS Participants to gauge an NDIS Provider’s standard of service delivery.
Applying the requirements of the NDIS Practice Standards and NDIS Code of Conduct in everyday practice makes compliance with NDIS obligations easier. It supports ongoing continuous improvement, helps make audit easier and most importantly, ensures best practice services are delivered to NDIS Participants consistently.
Engaging NDIS Participants in service planning, design, delivery and evaluations is essential to good NDIS compliance practices.
True person-centred support can only be achieved when service delivery is based on what NDIS Participants want and need. The resources provided below discuss different ways NDIS Participants can be actively included in their service provision.
Participation in quality audits is a valuable way for NDIS Participants to engage with and contribute to better service delivery.
NDIS quality audits don’t need to be daunting for NDIS Providers or NDIS Participants. However, it is important that NDIS Providers know how to best prepare for an audit and that NDIS Participants know how and why they may be involved.
- Participants
- Providers
Participants
The NDIS requires NDIS Providers to actively include NDIS Participants in their service delivery and continuous improvement. Understanding what best practice can look like and how to contribute to better service delivery can support NDIS Participants’ choice, control and autonomy.
Where do I find the NDIS Code of Conduct?
The NDIS Code of Conduct is available on the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission’s website under the NDIS Participants – Your Rights tab.
Do I have to participate in my NDIS Provider's audit?
NDIS Participants are automatically included in the NDIS audit process for NDIS Providers, unless they notify the provider they do not wish to participate in this process. It is NDIS Providers’ responsibility to get NDIS Participants’ consent to participate.
Participant Resources
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Fact Sheet: How Can I Contribute to Better Service Delivery?
This resource has been developed through a co-design process with NDIS Participants. This fact sheet is designed to be an easy reference for NDIS Participants to support them to be an active partner in better service delivery.
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Fact Sheet: How Can I Participate in Quality Audit?
This resource has been developed through a co-design process with NDIS Participants. This fact sheet is designed to be an easy reference for NDIS Participants to support them to understand what a quality audit is and how they can participate in one.
Providers
The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission manages NDIS Provider registration and quality assurance through an audit process. All Registered NDIS Providers must undergo an audit against the NDIS Practice Standards.
Where can I find the NDIS Practice Standards?
The NDIS Practice Standards are published on the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission’s website and are located under the NDIS Providers – Provider Responsibilities tab.
As a Registered NDIS Provider, how often will I get audited?
Verification audits are conducted annually.
Certification audits are conducted once every three years, with a smaller scope, mid-term audit conducted in between, at 18 months.
Provider Resources
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Case Studies: Examples of Best Practice Compliance Implemented by NDIS Providers.
These case studies have been developed to help Registered and Unregistered NDIS Providers reflect upon their current service delivery and provide opportunities for problem solving across common service delivery scenarios.
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Worksheet: The NDIS Code of Conduct - Guidance For Workers
This resource can be used to support NDIS workers’ understanding of the NDIS Code of Conduct. It can be used for initial training and as an annual refresher training tool.
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Opinion: Everyday Practice = Everyday Compliance
This opinion piece has been written by an NDIS Auditor and aims to give NDIS Providers some practical and easy-to-implement strategies to comply with the NDIS Practice Standards on a daily basis.
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Video: NDIS Audit
This video discusses how NDIS Participants are involved in the audit process and how audit can be easier for NDIS Providers.
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