Speak Out April 2016

NDIS

Adventures of Super Speech Pathologist and the NDIS Part 2

In SSP’s case, a number of agencies are involved in contributing to the transdisciplinary support for the participant, so SSP follows up with the family to identify the lead agency. As well as reporting on the participant’s progress and how the services are working together, with service providers contributing progress reports, the role of the lead agency may include managing how information is shared within the team in the ways that work best for them and the family (e.g. sharing copies of reports, regular review meetings etc.). Whatever arrangements are reached, the expectation is that reporting will occur in a way that is consistent with family centred practice, and recognises the central role of a child’s family in receiving information and deciding how and to whom it will be distributed. The typical expectation would be that families would receive all progress reports and that they would then provide these to the NDIS. SSP ensures that as part of her early sessions with the family she talks with them about the importance of communicating with all the team members. She explains this makes it possible for everyone involved to help achieve the goals, by understanding and being able to support and implement the strategies suggested by the team in a coordinated and holistic way. When talking through her service agreement with the family, she discusses why it is important for her to know everyone who is involved in providing early intervention supports. She also arranges consent to communicate with other providers, and gets clarification about how the family want that to work. SSP is aware that the introduction of the NDIS has meant that

In our previous adventures with Super Speech Pathologist (SSP for short), she had been approached by her very first NDIS participant, with their NDIS Plan in hand. SSP knows that the NDIS plan lists the goals identified by the NDIS participant in the meeting with the NDIS planner, along with the ‘reasonable and necessary’ supports to achieve them. The total funding available is included in the plan, and each support item has a funding amount against it. This particular NDIS participant is a child. One of the support items on the plan is a transdisciplinary early childhood intervention (see breakout box). As SSP looks through the goals that are listed, she can see one that seems to clearly sit within her scope (To be able to communicate my needs). Others (To be able to self- regulate my emotions) she feels she can contribute to in collaboration with other early childhood intervention colleagues. SSP had heard at a providers forum that the NDIS suggests families identify a lead agency where there is more than one provider involved in collaborating on the early intervention supports. She is aware that the lead agency is sent a ‘Request for Transdisciplinary Service’ form which outlines the required reporting, expected outcomes of the service in relation to progress towards the participant’s goals, the reporting frequency required, and includes a sample reporting tool to record progress. If only one agency was providing all therapy supports then it would be expected that agency would report on all therapies.

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Speak Out April 2016

Speech Pathology Australia