JCPSLP Vol 18 no 2 July 2016

National Disability Insurance Scheme

Top 10 Janice Buckland

I n January 2016 I clocked up 25 years of experience in the disability area. This area is not known for its abundance of resources and often, making do is the order of the day. In the Barwon Region, we have just entered our third year of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The extra resources have gone towards increasing services for the people we support, but it is yet to hit our resources’ wish list! Therefore, on the smell of an oily rag, we are welcoming the biggest change to disability in recent memory. There has been an increase in the number of people now eligible to access more appropriate levels of service, so there is an abundance of work to be done in the speech pathology area. Our service has grown and we now have more speech pathologists than ever before. Despite this increase, time is still a limited resource so it is important to make use of the resources that we have. 1 Time My appreciation of the value of time has grown tenfold. Time to reflect on good practice, future goals and resources required; time to mentor our new therapists and develop our skills; time to read and keep abreast of new developments. There never seems to be enough time. Funding is now much more transparent and we need to account for how each minute of our time at work is used. There is an expectation that we will get more done and that productivity will increase. With a better understanding of how long things take, we can then request an appropriate amount of time to achieve a goal. But how long does it take to program a communication device or conduct a mealtime review? These are the questions that we are gradually getting better at answering. Scope has put into place a structured practice support system to ensure that therapists still have time to develop their skills, and mentor other therapists. Improved systems will maximise the efficient use of time. 2 The Triple C Checklist of Communication Competencies Any therapist working in the adult area in disability services will be very familiar with this assessment. It is a no-fail checklist that is completed by family and supports for adolescents and adults who communicate with fewer than 50 functional words or signs. It is my go-to assessment to determine a person’s level of communication skill and I have found the revised edition containing an additional supplement even easier to use and follow. It is rare nowadays to come across staff in adult services who aren’t familiar with this particular assessment. Team it up with the InterAACtion Manual and you have a raft of communication strategies that are easy to develop for every level of communication. It makes so much sense that I even find myself sometimes referring to it when I am thinking about the communication skills of the young children that I am involved with.

Bloomberg, Karen, West, Denise, Johnson, Hilary, & Iacono, Teresa. (2009). Triple C kit , Revised edition. $110, available from http://www.scopevic.org.au/shop/triple-c-kit/ 3 The InterAACtion Kit Or Janice’s box, as it is known at Shannon Park. It was developed to go with the InterAACtion manual and is a large box of examples of communication supports. It is invaluable for showing people what the communication supports we are trying to develop might look like. It makes a large difference if someone can be shown a communication support and they can see how it might work for them or the people they support. Some people want the product to be exactly the same while others use them as a starting point to design their own. My box has travelled with me all over the Barwon South West region of Victoria and has been added to over the years. The lid doesn’t quite fit! The InterAACtion kit as described above is no longer available but it is possible to purchase a kit of Everyday Communication Aids that includes the InterAACtion Manual ($990.00) or the Communication Aid Creator ($120.00) which is a USB stick with over 50 templates to make different types of communication aids. This allows you to make your own kit! Both of these resources are available from http://www.scopevic.org.au 4 A good team I have worked with many wonderful speech pathologists, occupational therapists and physiotherapists over my career. This has shaped my practice as a therapist and has helped me see the overall picture for the person and not just focus on my own areas of interest. Therefore goals can be more functional. In the new environment, our team has grown and we now have many therapists working across these three streams. It is tempting for a lot of people to move into private practice within the NDIS model, but for me, I would miss the collegiality of such a wonderful team and working closely with others to achieve the goals of the people we support. 5 Enthusiastic therapy assistants With so many resources to be made, we have always relied heavily on our wonderful therapy assistants, and now more so than ever. The NDIS is also opening up many opportunities for therapy assistants to be involved in therapy follow-up with the people that we support. At the moment we are lacking in people that have the skills and knowledge to fulfil this role, but numbers are gradually building and if we add them to our recommendations, with adequate time for training, we will gradually build their skills. I see this as a real growth area and if we are creative it will be of great benefit to the people we support. The Regional Communication Services, which are part of the CAN network across Victoria, have been developing communication coordinator networks by training one or two disability support workers from as many day and

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JCPSLP Volume 18, Number 2 2016

Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology