Issue 78| 27 November 2006
There is currently a large number of clients for whom the DMI reassessment process is overdue. Reassessments are due on the two-year anniversary of the date on which they were first completed. If the DMI reassessment is not completed, authorised payments will be suspended and the case will ultimately be exited. The following rules are automated in FOFMS:
It is your responsibility to monitor DMI assessment and DMI reassessment dates. If your clients have their payments suspended or their cases exited as a result of DMI assessment or DMI reassessment dates not being met, you will not be back-paid.
You can monitor when your service’s clients are due for a DMI assessment and DMI reassessment by simply using the predefined queries that are built into FOFMS. To access the predefined queries you will need to be in the ‘Cases’ view. Then, from the ‘Queries’ drop down menu you can select either:
You should run these queries each month to help you monitor and plan your services DMI reassessment workload.
If your clients are exited because a DMI assessment or DMI reassessment was not completed and authorised within the due dates, you will need to contact the FOFMS Helpdesk to request that the case status be reset to 'Return from Suspension'. Once the case status is reset you will have one month to complete and authorise the required assessment. If the required assessment is not completed within that one-month period the case will be exited again and you will need to create a new case. You will also need to complete and authorise an Intake Assessment to receive payments for supporting this client.
To help you monitor DMI assessment and re-assessment dates, FOFMS also auto-generates an activity to notify case workers that a DMI reassessment is due. You need to ensure that you keep the case worker current in FOFMS otherwise the notifying activity will be sent to the wrong person.
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Additional funding for individual advocacy and to assist small services
On 16 November 2006 Minister Cobb announced an additional $600,000 funding over the next 18 months to increase the availability and increase access to advocacy to people with disability and their families.
The review highlighted a need for more individual advocacy in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. In recognition of this, individual advocacy services in these states have been invited to submit an application to expand services. This is aimed at increasing geographic coverage for people with disability and their families currently missing out on individual advocacy services. Small individual advocacy services in New South Wales and Western Australia have been invited to apply for up to an additional $22,500 and individual advocacy services in Queensland have been invited to apply for up to $45,000 additional funding to expand individual advocacy.
The review acknowledged that small advocacy services struggle to meet the costs of running their organisation, especially in relation to resources for equipment and training of staff. To address this, the 34 small services across Australia have been invited to submit an application for up to $4,500 of additional funding over the 18-month agreement to upgrade equipment or provide training for staff.
Return of new 18-month Funding Agreements
By now all advocacy services should have received their 18-month funding agreement. Do not forget that you must get it back to the Department by 15 December 2006 otherwise we may not be able to make your January payment.
Key Performance Indicators
Thank you to the people who have nominated to be part of one of the reference groups that are providing input to the department as work on improving the program. We will be in contact soon about your role and how we will progress.
One of the first issues that the reference group will work on is refining the proposed Key Performance Indicators. Once the Key Performance Indicators are refined we propose to introduce them in March 2007. The Key Performance Indicators will replace the Supporting Standards. This means when you do your next self-assessment, and when we conduct your next departmental audit, it will be against the Key Performance Indicators. The Key Performance Indicators will be further explained through core evidence questions, signposts and examples of evidence. (The department will develop a template that you can use to do your self-assessment).
Note that the new funding agreement requires you to do a self-assessment by May 2007.
Financial acquittals for National Disability Advocacy Program providers
In the contract variation that was issued to advocacy services for 1 July to 31 December 2006 there was a requirement that services provide an audited financial statement on 30 April 2007 for the six-month funding period. Given that all services are being offered 18 months of additional funding, it has been decided that services will not have to submit the statements for 6 months in April 2007 but instead submit a 12-month audited statement in September 2007. The 12-month audited statement will cover the entire 2006-07 financial year.
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CRS Australia is keen to ensure business services are kept fully informed about how they can enhance and add value to the wage assessment process. Over the following months a series of articles will appear in the disAbility e-news providing information on how the Business Service Wage Assessment Tool (BSWAT) should be applied in business services (based on industry feedback) and ways to make the process as effective as possible. The article below is the first in this series of articles and addresses how the collection of productivity timings can add value to the wage assessment process.
Provision of Productivity Timings for wage assessments by Business Services
The BSWAT assessments require collection of both primary and secondary (supplementary) information in order to achieve a realistic assessment which is most reflective of a worker’s usual performance. The provision of secondary information by business services is integral to the assessment process, and provides the opportunity to provide relevant input regarding an individual worker’s day to day performance. This ensures that the assessment process is collaborative with all parties having input, rather than the assessment relying solely on primary data collected during the assessment period.
Primary evidence/data is collected by the CRS Australia assessors and is compared against established performance standards or non-disabled comparator productivity standards.
Secondary information/data is provided to assessors via the completion of the Supervisors Workbook provided by CRS Australia, and can be supplemented with additional supporting evidence from case notes/DMIs. In addition, secondary information is supplemented by direct discussion with the supervisor/production manager at the time of assessment. It is important to note that the Workbook is not only used to record information relating to a worker’s competency, but should also be used to record productivity timings gained by the service prior to commencement of the assessment.
The completion of the Supervisors Workbook including productivity information will assist CRS Australia to conduct assessments that are:
Please note – the provision of productivity data (timings) is not compulsory. It does, however, enhance the quality of the assessment and enable a fair result to be reached for all parties. Without this information the assessment productivity result will be based solely on the primary data collected by the CRS Australia assessor when on-site.
CRS Australia can be contacted on 1800 444 557 to answer any BSWAT enquiries and assist with additional information on providing secondary information and productivity timings.
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When a case is created on FOFMS its status is automatically set to ‘draft’. In order for the status to change to ‘started’ and funding commence, an Intake Assessment must be completed and authorised. Unless the intake assessment is completed and authorised the case will remain in draft status and your organisation will not receive funding and the draft case will occupy a place in your outlet capacity.
Note: You can monitor your draft cases using FOFMS by simply selecting the draft cases pre-defined query from the cases view on FOFMS. For more details of how to use pre-defined queries refer to ‘Module 4 – Searching and Querying’ of your FOFMS User Guide.
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Some of you will have recently had notification that you will not be required to attend service provider focus groups this month. It is still our intention to conduct these focus groups and, as soon as we have new dates for them, we will be randomly contacting service providers for their feedback into the next phase of the project.
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Email disAbility e-news if you'd like more information on a particular issue or program or to let us know what you think of this e-newsletter.
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Your contributions to disAbility e-news are welcome. Do you want to let others know about your successes? Or how you engage with local businesses to create employment opportunities for people with disabilities? Email your story idea to disAbility e-news.
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