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Aged Care Information

Getting assistance from an SDAP Panel Member

Five step guide for assistance through SDAP

Download a copy of the 5 steps (PDF 41 KB)

The steps

There are five steps you need to take when looking for someone to help you in your Aged Care Service.

Step 1: The first thing you need to do is identify which areas of your Aged Care Service you need. Your local State or Territory Officer may be able to assist you with in completing the application form. You may also be able to identify SDAP support needs or capacity building through discussions with your stakeholders, in response to previous reports or audits or by looking at your Aged Care Service plans. Information about the five key functional areas of Care Delivery, Governance and Management, Financial Management, Qulaity Delivery and Locum Relief can be found on this page.
Step 2: Use the application form to outline the type of support you need or the area of Aged Care Service you want to focus on improving. At this stage you can either select a relevant Panel Member from the Panel list or ask the department to arrange the Panel member for you. If you are selecting from the list of Panel members, you are welcome to call the Panel Members to discuss your needs and talk about the service and support they can provide. Then send the application form to the department by following the instructions on the form.
Note: Funding for the Service Development Assistance Panel is limited and all applications for assistance will be assessed on an as needs basis. Applications for urgent or vital assistance will take precedence and be given as higher priority. Lower priority
applications may be placed on a waiting list for consideration at a later date.
Step 3: You may be contacted by a Panel member to assist them in preparing a work plan and quote. Before a Panel member can begin working with you, they will need to provide a detailed work plan to the department for the project, including an itemised quote, timeframe, specified
personnel, assignment aims and assignment deliverables. The department will provide the work plan to your service. Work will start once you and the department accept and sign the proposed work plan.
Step 4: Your Panel Panel Member will contact you to confirm your requirements and start working with you to improve your Aged Care Service.
Step 5: To make sure that the help provided matches the agreed work plan, you will be required to complete a Performance Completion Report (form 6) for the department. Once the department is satisfied that the work has been completed, it will close the report and arrange payments to the
Panel Member.

Five function areas

1. Improving care delivery

Better planning for better care
Care delivery is about how you plan and deliver effective aged care for your clients. A Panel Member can provide support, advice, guidance and professional development to help you to expand on your current care delivery practices and improve the performance of your aged care service.
Your Panel Member can work with you to help you plan for the care needs of your clients. An extensive network of care delivery Panel Members will provide a service that will help you to nurture important areas of your Aged Care Service, such as:
Clinical governance support and advice

• Creating clinical risk management plans and procedures
• Creating and managing resident and non-resident care plans
• Reporting incidents through better systems
• Being better prepared for clinical audits

Matching your services to the client’s needs

• Knowing your client’s needs
• Making sure your services meet the client’s cultural and care needs
• Providing the right services to meet priority needs

Getting the staff you need

• Looking at your current and future staffing requirements
• Recruiting new full-time and part-time people
• Planning for staff shortages
• Professional development and/or on-site training programs for your clinical staff

Working in your community

• Telling people about your services
• Matching your services to your community’s needs
• Working with other health and care-related services

Meeting your clinical care and service standards

• Understanding and applying aged care standards
• Keeping or getting your accreditation for aged care
• Quality assurance requirements to meet accreditation

2. Governance and management

Bringing out the best in your people
Aged care providers need good governance and management plans and actions that bring out the best in their people. Your Panel Member can provide guidance and practical support to help CEOs, board members, senior management or other staff in your organisation to be better leaders and communicators.Your Panel Member can help you understand and work to important government rules and regulations. They can help you by:

• Building the skills of your staff
• Creating professional development programs for your CEO, board members and senior management
• Assisting your staff to become better leaders and people managers
• Supporting your staff to become coaches and mentors for other staff
• Understanding and using new Aged Care Service and management practices
• Planning to make handing over new roles or responsibilities easier
• Building the Aged Care Service skills of your staff
• Looking at better practices to support your staff
• Providing advice and guidance to help set goals for your Aged Care Service
• Developing appropriate systems and procedures to run your human resources area to its full potential
• Practical Aged Care Service support
• Providing hands on help to create and use good Aged Care Service systems and procedures
• Giving you a better understanding of government rules and regulations about governance
• Developing and maintaining corporate governance strategies
• Turning your Aged Care Service reports and accounts into practical tools for decision making and planning
• Setting and achieving Aged Care Service goals
• Measuring performance
• Managing your Aged Care Service risks
• Improving communication with your stakeholders
• Providing you legislative compliance services advice

3. Financial management

Managing your money
If you need help working through government rules and regulations around financial management, or simply want to find ways to better manage your service’s finances, you can call in a Panel Member for support that fits your needs. Your Panel expert on finance will work with you to build the financial management skills and tools you need to run your service.

• Working to rules and regulations
• Using the Government’s Aged Care Funding Instrument, to reduce your paperwork
• Understanding and meeting government financial management rules and regulations
• Understanding your corporate financial governance requirements
• Managing money in your service
• Finding alternative funding
• Developing good financial systems and procedures
• Building and keeping to a workable budget
• Managing your assets
• Cost controls, accounting and financial management
• Getting the most for the money you spend
• Managing financial risks procedures

4. Quality delivery

Meeting the required standards
As a part of your funding support from the Australian Government, your service needs to meet required quality standards in the services you deliver. This is about making sure that older people in your community get the best aged care services available. Maintaining your ability to meet these standards is important as non-compliance with the standards can affect the level of funding and support you receive. A SDAP quality control Panel Member can help your service identify areas where improvement may be needed and develop practices and strategies that will assist you to meet the required standards.
Hands on support
When you engage a Panel Member on quality delivery your Panel Member will visit your service to see what accreditations and quality standards you need or could benefit from. The Panel Member will work with you to:

• Identify the quality standards you need to apply
• Help you develop and work to implement your quality improvement plans
• Help you create the documents needed for accreditations or to meet quality standards
• Provide education, on-site training and support for ongoing quality improvement
• Help you identify the resources and activities you need to reach your quality improvement goals and standards
• Help you identify and deliver better ways to provide your services for your clients
• Help implement the new Quality Framework, once developed (for National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flexible Program Services only)

5. Locum relief

Help find the right people to replace staff
Locum relief is only available to the 29 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flexible Aged Care Services and the 33 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander residential aged care services).
A key function of the SDAP will be to provide temporary staff to fill-in for an absent staff member who is essential to the delivery of the aged care services. A Panel Panel Member can help you find nursing staff, care managers etc to fill-in for staff who are unavailable to attend work due to unforseen circumstances or unplanned absences. Locum relief will not be granted to services to cover training or planned leave absences. Your Panel Panel Member on locum relief will take care of all arrangements and associated costs (excluding accommodation).

• Finding and training the right staff
• Locating suitable relief staff
• Conducting relevant character and police checks
• Working with the relief staff before they start so that they understand your aged care service
• Working with relief staff and you during the placement to keep things on track
• Making all arrangements for travel and training
• Providing cultural awareness training before the placement begins

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