Evaluation of the consumer - directed care initiative - Final Report

4.5 Profile of supports and expenditure - CDRC

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Breakdown of package expenditure

Unlike CDC, CDRC providers received an allocation of $2,000 per CDRC package to cover expenses associated with the administration of each respite package, client management and participation in the evaluation. This was separate to the CDRC package of $4,200.

Like CDC, some providers also charged for care planning and management (or “case management and coordination” in terms of formal service type definitions).

Between 86 per cent and 91 per cent of total CDRC package reported expenditure was spent on supports for participants, with the remaining 9-14 per cent on case management and coordination.

This is illustrated in the table below:

Table 7: Breakdown on CDRC package expenditure

	Apr-June	July-Sept
Proportion of reported package expenditure
Case management and coordination	9%	14%
Supports	91%	86%

Based on package expenditure reported by providers as part of the CDRC provider data collections. Excludes the $2,000 administration allocation which does not form part of a package.
Source: 2nd CDRC provider data collection (July-Sept 2011)

Scope of brokered supports

CDRC participants were able to choose the providers of their supports. However, unlike CDC providers, CDRC providers generally do not have significant in-house respite or other services, hence broker or purchase the majority of supports.

The table below illustrates the extent to which supports (excluding administration and case management and coordination) were provided in-house by the CDRC provider versus brokered or purchased from other support providers. As the table illustrates, the majority of supports were brokered or purchased – 77 per cent of services in the April-June 2011 quarter, and 66 per cent in the July-September 2011 quarter.⁷

Table 8: Proportion of CDRC package expenditure – in-house vs. brokered supports

	Apr-June	July-Sept
In-house supports	23%	34%
Brokered supports	77%	66%
	100%	100%

Excludes administration and care planning and management
Source: 2nd CDRC provider data collection (July-Sept 2011)

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Supports accessed

The tables below outline the most common types of supports accessed by CDRC participants – by the number of participants accessing each type of support, and the level of package expenditure on each type of support.

The tables illustrate that:

• The majority of participants accessed assessment, information and counselling, support or advice, though these services did not account for a significant proportion of package expenditure.
• The most common types of respite accessed were in-home respite and individualised respite, with 48 per cent of participants accessing these types of respite, accounting for 30 per cent of expenditure. ‘Regular respite’ accounted for a further 14 per cent of expenditure.
• Only 9 per cent of participants accessed Commonwealth-funded residential respite, accounting for 7 per cent of package expenditure. This mainly reflects participants’ reluctance to use residential respite because of quality concerns and their level of discomfort with placing the person they care for in residential respite. In addition, the need to book residential respite in advance may have limited its use during the initial period that participants had a CDRC package, and some providers may not have allowed or encouraged participants to use residential respite because of uncertainty around whether package funds could be used for this purpose.

Table 9: Top 5 types of support accessed by CDRC participants, by proportion participants accessing these supports, and by proportion of total package expenditure

		% partic.		% exp
1	Assessment	79%	In home respite	23%
2	Information provision	63%	Regular respite care	14%
3	Liaison/advice/support/ counselling	62%	Individualised respite	7%
4	In home respite	32%	Commonwealth funded residential respite	7%
5	Individualised respite	16%	Assessment	6%
8	Commonwealth funded residential respite	9%

Excludes administration and care planning and management
Source: 2^nd CDRC provider data collection (July-Sept 2011)

Appendix B contains further detail on the supports accessed by participants and expenditure on those supports, including data from the April-June 2011 quarter which has not been presented in this chapter.

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7. Note that substantially less expenditure was reported in the July-September compared with the April-June quarter, and this may have impacted on the splits between in-house and brokered services.

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