August 4, 2024 • 61 mins
On this episode Sam and Hannah chat with Linda Taylor and Greg Facoory from QSSS. We love providers who do things differently, and QSSS are a fantastic example. Listen in to find out their uniquely simple approach to support.
To find out more about QSSS head to their website at:
or give them a call on:
1300 378 777
You can also check out the QSSS YouTube at:
If you want to get in touch with us, you can:
Contact the podcast whatinthendispod@gmail.com
Contact Hannah hello@plandecoders.com.au
Contact Sam sam@rosenbaum.consulting
This episode of What in the NDIS now? Is brought to you by Astalty.
Astalty is the software solution for NDIS professionals, built by NDIS professionals. Astalty is my go-to software, and Astalty is trusted and loved by hundreds of other NDIS providers. I love how easy it is to use, and how it keeps all my participant information, notes, and invoicing in one place, available to me at any time, from any device.
Sign up now for your 14-day free trial. Head to astalty.com.au to sign up today and see for yourself how much easier managing all your NDIS business needs is by using Astalty. Thanks again to Astalty for sponsoring today’s episode.
You can also check out our Patreon:
What In The NDIS Now? Podcast | Patreon
Subscribing to our Patreon supports us to continue producing What in the NDIS now? As a perk of subscribing, you too can send us your questions, which we will answer in an upcoming episode!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
We acknowledge the original owners of the land on which we podcast,
(00:03):
whose stories were told for thousands of years. Today we are recording in Mianjin. We pay our
respects to elders past and present who may be listening. Sovereignty was never ceded.
A quick note before we get started that there may be some swearing in today's podcast. If
you don't like swearing or usually listen with children in the car, you have been warned.
(00:35):
This episode of What in the NDIS Now is brought to you by Astalti. Astalti is the software solution
for NDIS professionals built by NDIS professionals. Astalti is my go-to software and Astalti
is trusted and loved by hundreds of other NDIS providers. I love how easy it is to use and how
(00:59):
it keeps all my participant information, notes and invoicing all in one place available to me anytime
from any device. Sign up now for your 14-day free trial. Head to astalti.com.au to sign up now.
See for yourself how much easier managing all your NDIS business needs are by using Astalti.
(01:24):
Thanks again to Astalti for sponsoring today's episode. You're listening to What in the NDIS
Now, a podcast where I, Hannah Redford, and my friend Sam Rosenbaum interview participants
and providers about all things NDIS. Hey, Sam, how are you going? Yeah, really good, Hannah.
(01:44):
How about yourself? Good. We're here recording today at the office of Kurumurra. So we really
appreciate the use of their office, but we're here to interview Linda and Greg from QSSS, which they
will explain shortly, and I'm really excited to hear from them. So welcome to the podcast.
(02:11):
Thank you for having us. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on, guys.
First to get started, what does QSS stand for? Well, that's a story. We love a good story. So QSSS
was born in 2009 and founded by Louise Lowe, and she named it something that no one can ever remember,
which is Queensland Support Services and Solutions. And we very quickly worked out that nobody ever
(02:37):
used that terminology, never could remember it, but we wanted to honour the heritage. So we kept
the heritage of the Q for Queensland, which is actually, when you look at it, it's a wheelchair,
a racing wheelchair with a path. The Q is a path. So that's kind of cool. And we kept the
SSS because everyone knows us as QSSS. So actually, officially, we are just QSSS. Lovely. Good little
(03:02):
backstory there. Yeah. So where did you each grow up? I grew up in a sleepy town of Wallingbar
in New South Wales, very close to Byron, Ballina, Austenville, Wismoor, for those Northern New South
Wales people. And I grew up in a little suburb called Mansfield, just on the south side of
Brisbane. I'm a Southie boy through and through. Yeah, pretty much grew up there till, yeah,
(03:27):
around 20. And then I saw, I'm not a nomad. I'm very boring. Just go from one, just two places.
That's it. And down a Logan way at the moment, or Logan Heights, because it's the nice part of Logan.
Linda, how did you get into the disability sector? I'm a nurse by trade. So I left sleepy
(03:49):
Wallingbar and went to Brisbane to start my nursing career. And I did a lot of work with children
as a young nurse. And a lot of them had disabilities. And I loved, absolutely loved that
job. If I was going back as a nurse, I'd be back in the paediatric hospital with kids. But
for many, many reasons, I ended up in aged care, worked my way up in a corporate world with some
(04:10):
really large companies in aged care, who also had disability arms, got a little bit more exposure in
that space. And then in a bit of a change of life career, getting out of the corporate world,
I actually met Louise, who was the founder is the word I'm trying to say, of QSSS. And,
(04:33):
you know, we got to talking and she eventually allowed me to buy the business. So that's how
I ended up in fully in the disability world. But I've had a very long history in that space.
Yes. Yeah. And Greg?
Well, I was sort of dragged along by the scruff of the neck by Linda, to be honest,
in a good way. So essentially, my background is in compliance. So that's, I've pretty much been in
(04:59):
that compliance space for a very long time. First of all, started out in the drug and alcohol space
around drug rehab. And also, you know, being the auditor and a few other, you know, and overseeing
the compliance of state based organizations, then as a, you know, just for kicks, just went into
(05:20):
sort of a job in age in the aged care space, thought that'd be a nice little career change,
that'd be pretty cool. And it was and so that's when I met Linda in the aged care space. And then,
you know, cut a long story short, I was sort of doing my own thing in the aged care space,
Linda had already become the CEO of QSS. And I was assisting with some grant writing,
(05:47):
because I'm heaps good at words and stuff and things. And so, yeah, helping to write some
grants for QSS. And then all of a sudden, I sort of get a phone call saying, Hey, do you want to
meet the board? It's like, sure. And, you know, and met the board. And then all of a sudden,
it's like, Hey, do you want to jump on board? And it's like, absolutely. And the reason is,
(06:10):
because it's really quite simple, because, you know, we've seen how bad things happen or bad
mindsets, you know, essentially, essentially stifle that individuality. And aged care, while
there are some really good things around aged care, the enabling independence and enabling choice and
control and the decision making in person centered care, all and all of that sort of stuff
(06:32):
is good in rhetoric. But in actuality, it's frustrating, because it's there's this whole
rampant paternalistic mindset. Because just because you're old, you don't, you know, and you
might have a diagnosis, meaning you can't actually make your own decisions, which is rubbish. Even
those who have, you know, even significant, you know, dementia actually have their ability to make
(06:54):
their own decisions. You know, it's just all it's the mindset of the person receiving it thinking,
well, actually, you've got a diagnosis, so you can't. And so, you know, we, with Linda and the
board, and now a really cool team around us, we've seen the bad. And now we're on a mission to try and,
you know, not essentially change the minds and sort of do things really in a unique and different
(07:19):
way so that we can enable and do what we can to not go down that path in the disability space and
and really open up those choices and decisions. And, you know, being a facilitator, not necessarily
the, you know, whenever I hear, you know, providers or people go, we allow choice, it's like,
oh, come on, you don't allow everybody's got the ability to make a choice. If as soon as you put
(07:45):
the allow in front of it, you're actually saying that you're the controller, and we're giving you
permission to have a choice. No, we're not, we're not allowing choice, we're hoping to facilitate
and enable them. And that's essentially where, you know, what we stand for, in trying to do our best
to do that. So, Greg, I first met you when we had some coffee. We did. And you explained to me about
(08:11):
how QSSS is providing support in a slightly different way. And I was really impressed with
the model. Yep. So can you explain a little bit to us about how that works? How that works? All
right. So our model is really, well, we call it uniquely simple, and it is really uniquely simple.
(08:37):
It's simple in concept, but what we find is hard to pull off. So to cut it, to really get to the
crux of it, where you find a lot of people in the industry or providers in the industry have
their proverbial pool of support workers in the wings, and you get a phone call saying,
from either a support coordinator or a participant saying, hey, I really like what you stand for,
(09:03):
can I have supports? Well, ordinarily, what we find is that it'll be, yeah, we've got people
ready in the wings for you. And so while that's great, in some respect, what it does, it actually
limits the person-centered sort of approach or the connection that you can make with people,
because ultimately, your pool of people is the availabilities of support worker connection is
(09:29):
down. So we are really big on connection. And so instead of having the proverbial pool of support
workers, what we do is that we really get to know what makes a participant tick. And that's not
necessarily around, you know, you're hearing when somebody describes a participant, hey, tell me
about Jim. And it's like, oh, yeah, Jim's a wheelchair user, Jim's got MS. And it's like,
(09:53):
no, that's not Jim. That's not Jim. Jim's actually, you know, he loves watching the footy.
He loves his coffee. He loves sort of going out. He loves his arts and crafts. He loves all of this
sort of stuff. It just so happens that he's a wheelchair user. So for some reason, we seem to
boil people down to a disability as opposed to who are they are to the core. And so what we try to
(10:15):
achieve is actually find out what that person is to the core. And when we, you know, have that
conversation and sit down and have a hopefully over a decent coffee, and know what that person is,
who that person is to a core, we actually create an ad all about that person. And if you have a
look at any of our job ads in support worker ads on QSSS, it's all about the person. The first,
(10:41):
you know, three quarters are all about what makes this person tick. And also their proverbial wish
list of qualities that they want to see out of a support worker. And we're not talking skill set.
We're actually talking, you know, somebody, you know, who resonates with me. So it might be,
you know, you might want somebody who enjoys their 40 or enjoys their music or whatever that
picture looks like. And so we'll spend three quarters of the ad describing that person.
(11:05):
And then maybe a quarter based on the technical side of things of, you know, needs to have your
manual handling, needs to be, you know, have an understanding of stoma or whatever, you know,
that technical side of things. But it's all about that connection. And so what that does,
we'll post that up on on on Seek and Indeed and all the other platforms, all at our cost. So we
(11:26):
don't charge anything to the participant at all. The only thing we charge the participant is boots
on the ground. So when the support worker starts, that's that's essentially when we charge below
the price guide. But what that does, the ad does is actually enable that connection between support
worker or applicant and participant even before they even met. Because when you read the ad,
(11:49):
it's sort of like a potential applicant goes, that sounds like a really cool dude. I think that I can
work with this person. I think that this would be a really good opportunity for me and for this
this person that I'm applying for, to create that connection and really do some really cool stuff.
And so as opposed to come work for disability, are us. Yeah. And, you know, I don't know what
(12:10):
I'm getting myself into, but I just want a job. Yeah, that's not what we're after. And so from
that we will screen, we'll do our own screening, we'll call it the, excuse the language, we call
it the serial killer and asshole test. Yeah, that's essentially is serial killer. So I am stealing
(12:32):
that. We're going to add that into our recruitment phase. Nice. My business partner is going to kill
me. The reason why I call that is because we don't want to be the roadblock to people getting
applicants. So we can try and find the unicorn, what we call the unicorn, the ethereal sort of
support worker who ticks every single box that generally doesn't exist. Or we can at least find
(12:55):
out if they're a decent person. What we're looking for is a decent person and do they tick the
non-negotiables that the participant has actually asked. So that's essentially the ticket. And
there's a very good reason for that. And that is that it's not up to us to choose. Correct. It is
the client's choice. So we've got to make sure that the dangerous ones are not presented. But
(13:17):
we aren't the ones who say Greg's not the right person. Right. So it's really important that the
client sees all of that and has the option to interview, meet, trial if they want to,
and select their own team, not us. Yeah. And so once we do that test, we will give the profiles
(13:39):
of the shortlisted applicants to the participant. The participant goes, all right, I really like the
idea of applicant number one, not so much two or three, really like the idea of applicant four,
five, but not six. And so then we'll organise meet and greets, whether that's a formal interview
process, whether that's a team's meeting, whether that's a phone call, whatever that picture looks
(14:03):
like, whatever is comfortable to the participant. And that is the ability for both the participant
and the support worker to get a feel as to whether they can work with each other. This is before we
even start the actual onboarding, whether they can work with each other, because once again,
that connection is the most imperative. And then the participant will go to us, yeah, bring on number
(14:25):
one, not so much number four, but yes to number six. I think I've got those numbers right.
And then we'll start the onboarding, the training, and then boots on the ground. And that's when,
yeah, that's when we start the support. Yeah. So when you described that to me,
I thought this is great. And I think there are some providers who do some aspects of this, like
(14:56):
they will go to the market and say, we need someone who is something like this for this
particular participant, but then they miss the rest of it, which is the interviewing, the trial,
which I was like, oh, this makes so much sense. And then the last bit of it that I really loved
(15:21):
was one of the things you said is we find that then the participant and the support worker have
a greater success of longevity, of working together. And you find that you have participants who are
going to go through fewer people because they are happy with the people they essentially recruited
(15:46):
for their team. There is ownership there by the participant because they've made their choice,
but there's that relationship. There's also that connection for the support worker. So the
connection starts at reading of the ad because they read an ad, they connect with an ad,
the person that the ad's about, and then they go and meet that person. So it's almost like a dating
(16:07):
website in a way because you're matching people with the right... Without the creeps.
That sounds awful, but it's a matching service. So you want people to, and then they almost have
to break up if they leak. Support workers have to let someone know that they're not going to be the
support worker, the client know, and that's pretty hard. So I've been in the industry way too many
(16:32):
years. It's over 30 years now, and this is the lowest ever turnover rate in staff, ever.
That's quite phenomenal.
It's phenomenal. It's significantly lower.
Especially in this industry. From all industries, it is a breakup. And it's not by design. We're
not trying to keep people hostage. Because when you make that connection, it's really hard to
(16:57):
break that connection.
Having said all of that, when someone's starting out with building their team,
there is a bit of a turnover in that first couple of weeks, two months maybe, depending on the
client, because they'll try somebody and it won't quite work. And that's okay. That support worker
might connect with another client somewhere else, but it's not right for that particular client.
(17:20):
And that's okay. We just work through that until they get their solid, what we call a solid team
around them. One that can cover all of the shift fills, all of the sickness and the annual leave
and all of those things. They really manage between themselves then, which is really cool.
And then you also don't have the support workers, what we call the milk run. You see a lot of
(17:43):
support workers going from one client, a participant to another participant, to another
participant, all in succession. And then if you're later on in the day, then good luck getting a
support worker on time, because you've got all these people in front of you. We don't have that
proverbial milk run either, because it's their team. Sure, we might have support workers who
(18:05):
might be on a few different teams, but we will manage that situation. Because since there's
other people on the team as well, we can make sure that that milk run just doesn't happen.
And so when a participant wants a support worker, that's when they get a support worker.
We can't actually fit you in at that time. How about this time? No, that's not it.
(18:28):
You want a support worker at this time, provided it's within the rules that we all work under.
Then there's no reason why, and providers, and your funding, and your budget, and all the other
technical stuff, provided we can make it happen, it's going to happen.
Yeah, this is a really interesting concept to me, especially from the employee experience,
and from a staffing point of view. So if a support worker is coming on board, do they just look at
(18:54):
one participant, or do they potentially have multiple participants that they might be connected
with? It completely varies, depending on the individual and how much they want.
They want to work, and how many clients like them. At the end of the day, they've got to sell
themselves. So there is some of our star performers out there actually do know many of our clients,
(19:16):
and they're actually in hot demand to be on a team. We're very careful about that, though.
We don't want to spread people too thin that they're not available to the team,
every team that they're on. So that's really important. So that's a bit of a balancing act
behind the scenes to make sure that that's not happening, but they can. So some will have a
couple of clients that they go to see. Some will just be just for that client and nobody else.
(19:41):
Okay. So it sort of works a little bit flexibly on that individual's financial needs ultimately,
because that's why we all have a job. That's right.
So if you're sort of wanting full-time, we've got that opportunity versus...
Yeah, some of them work more than full-time. We try not to do that.
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes we have to save support workers from themselves,
(20:03):
because they want to, you know, just give me all the hours you got. Well, you know,
we've got a responsibility as a responsible employer to actually manage your workload,
regardless of whether you want to manage it or not. We'll make sure that we don't burn you out.
But our workforce is casualized because, you know, we need that... the participants need that
(20:23):
flexibility more to the point. As soon as you've got a contracted workforce from a support worker
perspective, then you've got your minimum hours that you need to meet. And then if, say, for
example, a participant goes on holidays or goes to hospital, whatever, then we essentially have to
(20:43):
divvy out support workers who, you know, to other participants who they might not have met before.
And, you know, it sort of goes all against our model. So by having that casualized workforce,
we've got that flexibility. We're not beholden to any minimum hours. And we do like to look
after our support workers as much as we can, but ultimately it's the participant who chooses the
(21:06):
hours in which they get. And we don't, as an organization, we don't stipulate, you know,
we hear a lot around, you know, we're not going to take participants on board who are less than 8,
10, 12 hours a week or whatever. You know, we don't do that either.
We had 20 hours a week or two ago.
Oh, 20. Yeah.
That blew my mind.
(21:27):
Yeah. We don't take participants who are less than 20 hours a week. And it's like,
what are you doing? Like, that's crazy.
Yeah. That is one of my bug bears. Or they, you know, some of my participants
might only want a two hour shift while they get to know someone.
Yep.
And people go, no, our minimum is five hours. And you're just like, okay, well, that's not going to
(21:53):
work, is it?
No, it's not going to work for the person. It's not going to work for the plan either,
because then you find a plan has been siphoned so significantly that by the end of the plan,
they've run out of funds and then you need to go for a change of circumstance or whatever.
And we've had instances where, you know, hey, this person's run out of funds.
Well, and the NDIS pretty much goes, well, that's your problem.
(22:13):
Yeah.
Very common comment.
Yeah. It's not our problem. That's yours. You didn't manage the fund properly.
You over-serviced the client.
Yeah. You over-serviced the client is a common sort of thing. Well, no, we have a responsibility.
Actually, the client chooses their supports.
Well, that's not us.
Yeah.
I've had this big bug there for quite a while where the agency goes and gives $100,000,
(22:37):
$200,000 a year plans without providing a mechanism to understand how to budget properly.
And yes, we sort of say that this is a mix of a support coordinator's versus a plan manager's
role, but not everyone gets support coordination in the first place. And forecasting and planning
(22:59):
for spend is most definitely not a job of a plan manager, which I actually had a support coordinator
tell me in the meeting that I should go ask the plan manager because that was their job,
which I politely told them for a very extended rant to relook at their job definitions,
essentially, because that is their job.
But we're also not empowering the participants that generically are low-income Centrelink,
(23:27):
$500, $600 a week if they're lucky to learn how to budget with access to hundreds of thousands
of dollars to work out how to spend, how to get their life sorted. And they just go,
here, there's a lovely big figure. I want this, which is perfectly logical in their decision
and needing support, but there's no support for them or guidance in how to plan out that support,
(23:51):
what adding two hours on every Monday on top of a four-hour shift would look like and how that
would impact in the long term. It's just not something that's...
Well, let's face it, some of the packages we see in disability sector, not aged care,
but in disability sector are bigger than many small businesses. And we're asking people to
know how to manage that fund in a way that gets them through the period of the dates for the plan.
(24:18):
That's a big thing. I think we underestimate that.
Yeah. And sometimes we don't even know what that... we just get word of mouth that this is the figure.
We don't have any visibility. We don't have a right to that visibility. We would like to be
able to have that, but ultimately, there's only so much that people are willing to share. And I
totally respect and understand that, but it comes as sometimes a surprise at the end.
(24:40):
It's like, where's it all gone? We're doing what we're told to do. I don't know. No, you didn't.
You've mentioned aged care a little bit now. So you do NDIS and aged care. And I also saw on your
website that you do veteran affairs and a few other things.
Yeah. So we aren't an approved provider in aged care, but we can broker our services to a provider.
(25:02):
So if there was a participant out there that was on an aged care funding and they really wanted
QSSS as their provider, then we can contract through third parties, basically, to deliver that
service. Aged care is tricky in that the funds are really pathetic. I mean, Australia needs to
fundamentally change the way they think and feel about people who are aged because there's not
(25:24):
enough funding for them.
Nowhere near enough.
Nowhere near enough. If any of you have got ageing parents, you'll know all about that.
Yeah, I've just lived and breathed the last five years of home care packages and then aged care
packages.
There you go. Max's.
And detrimental service provision and lack of service provision and lack of management of
(25:46):
service provision.
Yeah.
And then all the administration fees on top of the package and everything. So for all the
listeners out there, pretty much the maximum of any package is around $56ish. Don't quote me on
the...
I think it's just gone up.
$54, $56 around that. That is the highest package that is available for home care. Any needs above
(26:09):
that and you're looking at, unfortunately, resi care.
And then you've got admin fees of about 12 to 15% and management fees of approximately the same
amount.
Yep. And that's for everything. That's for your allied health, your personal cares, your nursing,
that 50-odd minus admin fees needs to cover everything.
(26:29):
Which is a very hard task to achieve.
Oh, yeah.
What made that decision from you guys as a business to hit those multiple areas rather than just
focusing on NDIS? And how has that impacted the overall viability and then also part of your
strategy planning for that?
Yeah. So the short answer is we focus mainly on disability. Our heritage is that we had a couple
(26:56):
of clients in the DISAOA world. So they're people with a disability who are funded under DISAOA,
Disability Supports for Older Australians, because they were over 65 when NDIS came in. So they're
still on our books and we'll continue to love and support them through their journey because that's
not easy either. We thought about becoming an aged care provider, but really you've got to be in it
(27:24):
or not in it, because it's a big, big thing to become a...
It's a behemoth.
Yeah, it's huge. Huge. Which is what Greg started with us looking at. In the end, we decided we
wouldn't do that, that we would focus purely on disability. If people really want our services in
the aged care world, we will help them to do that, but that's very minimal for what we do. DVA is a
(27:47):
bit similar. We've just had a client just recently transition from NDIS to DVA and we've become the
attendant, I think they call it attendant care provider for him. And that's fine. We can do that.
We're registered for that sort of thing, but it's not our core business. Our core business is NDIS.
And we want to do that. We've made a specific business decision to stick to our lane in terms
(28:12):
of support in NDIS. We don't do support coordination. We don't do SDAs. We don't do properties.
We work with partners in that space. So if people are coming to QSSS wanting to find an SDA home,
we'll help them through our partners, but we don't do that. We stick to what we're really good at
and do that really well. And if we can do one thing, if we can influence one other provider
(28:36):
to deliver a support service like we do, then we've done our job because nobody's doing it.
And I personally, as a support coordinator, love, love, love providers that just stay in their lane
and just do the one thing because then you know they're doing that one thing really well,
because they do that day in, day out, and they don't try to spread themselves too thin
(29:00):
by trying to do 20 other things as well. And inevitably they do the other 20 things poorly.
Yes.
I mean, yeah, it's the whole sort of conflict of interest debate as well. You know, we've had
(29:22):
discussions about expanding and all that sort of stuff, but ultimately, like what you're saying,
we feel we're really good at what we do. So why would we want to jeopardize that?
Why would we want to sort of, you know, essentially dilute what we're doing really well
and trying to be essentially a master of none? So, you know, we do, we've got a little bit of a
(29:45):
cynical view when it comes to, you know, we see providers go, and we've got support coordination,
we've got service provision, we've got allied health, we've got nursing, we've got SDAs,
we've got SILs, we've got everything under the sun, but, you know, choice and control,
yeah, everybody gets a choice. And it's like, well, yeah, but I'm sure there's a little bit
of leading the witness, Your Honour. I'm sure that there would be a little bit of that. And
(30:09):
I wouldn't mind so much if you actually, you know, if somebody comes to you under a banner of,
say, support coordination. All right, so you come under support coordination, that means that that's
the only thing you are engaged with that person with. That doesn't limit choice and control,
because there are thousands of other providers out there who can do other parts of the business.
(30:29):
But if we can sort of have a, you know, understanding within the industry of one person,
one sort of, you know, reason for going, and we'll facilitate everything else, then that's cool.
But to sort of, you know, then have support coordination, service provision, and essentially,
it makes it a lot harder, I would expect, from a participant to leave, because ultimately,
(30:52):
if I leave this arm of the business, then in my brain, I'd be going, well, that jeopardises
every other single service that I get from this person. And so essentially, I'm sort of locked in,
as opposed to if I'm just restricted to accessing this service for this arm, and everybody else is
somewhere else, doesn't matter where it is, that's the true choice and control. And that's also the
(31:17):
true choice and control to leave, as well, without the jeopardising of the other parts of the
business. So it's, you know, we've sort of stuck to our lane, and we were passionate about that.
Now, another thing I wanted to pick up was that you earlier said that you charge below the price
(31:38):
guide. Yes. Or below the maximum. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you do that? That's really simple,
really simple, uniquely simple. Uniquely simple. We don't need to. So we charge less than the
NDIS rate, which is a maximum. Yes. We pay our support workers more than the award. We don't pay
(32:01):
for things that are unnecessary. We have no properties, we have no cars. We pay reasonable
salaries to our executive team, but they're small. Our overheads are very low. So if I compare our
overhead rate to the corporate world, we're less than half of what the corporate world are paying
in overheads. Right? So there's no need. And we don't charge any admin fees. We only charge for
(32:29):
every hour of support work that goes into the home, whenever that is, you know, whatever rate
that is, you know. And we still make, we are not, the owners of this business are not in it to make
our mansions. We're in it to make a fair and equitable living, yes. But we're not, and we're
not here to lose money. But we're not here to line our pockets. We're here to deliver a support
(32:52):
service to vulnerable Australians that deserve better. And that's what we're doing. So we'll
always be slightly under in that way. Yeah. And so when it comes to the actual sort of
labour that's involved in setting somebody up, you know, the boots on the ground, it can be
hundreds of hours worth of labour just to get that first support worker on the ground, not to mention
(33:18):
the cost of seek ads, which I think around a smidge and under $4.50 a pop, just to put a
support worker seek ad. And given that we're putting seek ads for every single participant,
there's a lot of costs that are involved. And that's why even though the concept is uniquely
simple, it is in reality, it's not that easy to pull off well. And so, but even still, because
(33:46):
we don't have, like what Linda was saying, the bricks and mortar, the vehicles, the uniforms,
all of that sort of stuff, we absorb those costs and we can do it. And something we're passionate
about, we don't charge the administration fee, the set up fees, all of the other fees, just hours
that support workers are doing the things that they're doing in the home. And point to note,
(34:07):
we've been doing it since 2009, well before NDIS was in play. So this model was set up well before
the NDIS. It fits beautifully into the intent of the NDIS. Yes, but it's not because of the NDIS.
It's because the people who have been involved with QSSS, both Louise and us, as the new owners,
(34:31):
are passionate about. We actually want to disrupt the industry. We actually want it to change as a
whole. Using your collective sort of background, I'd really like to understand whether or not you've
done kind of a bit of a cost analysis of journey versus kind of your standard operating model where
it's recruit, put in place, they leave, repeat that process for hire and keep trying to keep that
(34:56):
retention rate going. But with your model, it kind of seems like the middle part of support workers
leaving and coming, trying to replace that, that cost seems to have kind of decreased with the
model and the approach that you guys are going for. Have you sort of mod like? No, no, because we hate
the corporate thinking and the corporate world. We know it works because we're making the business
(35:23):
is not losing money. Right. We know it's working. We haven't done any cost analysis to that degree,
but the indicators are there. So the fact that the overheads are so much lower. So we monitor
some KPIs, billable hours, that's going up all the time. We monitor turnover rates, which is
(35:49):
consistently low. We can see when things are a bit out of kilter because those things will fluctuate
when it's a bit out of kilter and we have to bring it back and say, no, we've got to get back to
basics, we call it, but get the core back in place. But as for doing cost modeling, no,
no, I haven't really done it. It'd be very interesting to sort of say it. Yeah, it would
(36:11):
be a good research study actually to get to know that. I'm thinking students, students.
Outsource it. A PhD for somebody. Yeah. Would actually be a good PhD for somebody. Yeah,
it'd be interesting. Any PhDs for it. As the candidates out there, please get in touch.
That's right. It's qtriples.com.au. But yeah, so it's really kind of a bit of an interesting
(36:36):
model and kind of the centre point from keeping it very participant focused rather than necessarily
we're running a business as well. It's actually participant driven. Yeah. That's what we like to
say because it's more than just focus. I mean, the corporate world will talk about client-centred
care. One, we don't care for, we support people to live their life how they choose to live it,
(37:00):
not how we think they should live it. Two, it's about not being corporate. It's about being there
for the participant. Right? So what got me out of the corporate world was I was sick of sitting in
front of clients, hearing complaints because they were waiting enormous number of hours for
(37:25):
people to come through their door because they're doing the proverbial milk run. So starting at eight
and got 10 clients before midday. So they were lucky for the support worker to come through the
door on time and then they don't know their name. And Linda, you want me to get undressed
and do very personal things with this person I don't even know the name of? And do you think
(37:50):
I could go back and change that in the corporate world? It's like turning an ocean liner. It was so
slow. So I left the corporate world to try and make a difference and discovered Louise doing this
model in QSSS and said, that's what we've been trying to do, but we couldn't do it. I used to
(38:10):
say to the CEO, we need to Uberise this company. We need to close it down over here and open it up
as another completely different company because you're so caught up in corporate overheads and
EBAs and unions telling you how you have to do your business that you can't actually do it. You
(38:34):
can't set up self-managed teams because the system won't allow you to do it. So you have to reopen
it over here. Well, Louise was opening it over here and all I had to do was say, yes, I'll do it.
And I guess the other part that was doing my head in was,
each entity has its own risk profile and its appetite for risk. And in aged care,
(38:57):
it just goes OTT. It goes just absolutely over the top. And so it became an issue whereby
because of this risk aversion, risk avoidance, it was actually stifling so much choice and control
and decision making and all of that sort of stuff. And bashing my head against a brick wall, being
(39:20):
the compliance guy who is actually supposed to be on that side of the desk saying, you can't do
that. I'm the one sort of trying to say, hey, why can't this guy have an electric blanket because
he's really cold at night and a hot pack isn't just doing it. And it goes all the way up to the
executive just to get an electric blanket. And it took two months for a person in a residential care
(39:46):
who has the ability to do their own stuff and everything in between and was finding that he
couldn't sleep because of an electric blanket, but an electric blanket is too much risk. You can wash
electric blankets, you can do all sorts of other, and it just went all the way to the top. So the
amount of waste from even just a labor perspective and wasted effort and wasted oxygen is just
(40:10):
for what reason? And so that's the other thing that really gravitated me towards,
it wasn't even a thought. It's just when I was asked to jump on board, it's absolutely because
I could, having done a lot of that grant writing that when we were starting to explore the aged
care, I could see exactly what the situation was. And even I was going, holy crap, this is what we've
(40:34):
been trying to achieve for a very long time. And because of all the red tape and all the risk
aversion, it just wasn't, there was no appetite because it was seen as too much risk. Well,
it's not, it's actually just human decency. It's just exactly how it should be. It doesn't make
sense as to why we put all these blockages when we have no right to put blockages on them. And it's
(41:00):
just crazy. We did, when we were kicking off with our company, I went through, because I'm a risk
background as well, I went through a process with my business partner, Jason, to develop our,
our starting point was actually our risk acceptance or risk tolerance statements, essentially.
And we went very specific in looking in our disability supports around, because we do events
(41:22):
management and to do kind of event activities and programs, very much looking at what our tolerance
and our level of acceptance from risk for our participants. And we went with a very high
tolerance base, purely around the two fundamental principles of choice control, and then also
dignity of risk. Because if it's not going to kill you and you really want to do it, why should you
(41:44):
not be able to? Exactly. That's what sent one CEO under the desk and catatonic, because one of our
aged care clients in a nursing home wanted to jump out of a plane. Oh bless. I must admit,
when I was thinking about an elderly man jumping out of a plane and landing, I'm thinking there
(42:05):
may not be a bone not broken when you land, to be honest, you know, you're aged, you're frail. But I
sat down with him and I said, you do know that if you jump out of this plane, you may die. Because
I wanted to hear what his response was. And he said, Linda, I could walk out that door, which was
just outside in a courtyard and trip on that step. And I could hit my head and die. But I wouldn't
(42:30):
be happy. But if I jump out of a plane and die, my one last wish, because he'd done so many other
risk taking activities in his life, I'll die happy. And I said, well, how can I stop that? 100%.
And so the CEO, I said to the CEO, we've got a client who, a resident who would like to jump
out of a plane, chasing under the table, because he was a lawyer. But to give him credit, though,
(42:58):
he said yes. He said yes in the end when we talked him through it. And he offered to sponsor some of
the costs. So that was pretty cool. If I was at home, I've got a smile on my face this whole story.
Yeah, but that was a long process of beforehand staff was saying no, no, no, no, no. And the
activities officer that was on that day, I said, why are you saying no? And she said, gave a reason.
(43:23):
I can't even remember what reason she gave. Because she couldn't possibly have it on her conscience
if something went wrong. And I said, do you want to jump out of the plane? She said, yeah. I said,
no, you can't. Just looked away. She goes, why not? I said, because I said you can't. She goes, but
I said, that's what you're doing to our resident. Stop it. He has a right to live his life the way
(43:47):
he chooses to live it. Doesn't matter whether he's aged, doesn't matter whether he's living in a
residential care. And it's no different in the disability sector. People have a right to live
their lives how they want to live it, not how we think they should. And it's not up to us to judge.
It's up to us to facilitate. Yes, tell them the risks. Talk to them about the risks if there's
risks. But don't ever stop somebody. That's their choice. Yeah. So this is another area in which I'm
(44:12):
really passionate about. And I've done so many different talks to so many different rooms around
the whole Dignity of Risk concept. And the problem is that it's actually seen as a concept, not
necessarily a series of steps. And the series of steps are essentially, well, how, first of all,
not why is this bad? It's how can we make this happen in the most safest way possible?
(44:32):
And also the understanding that everybody's got a different tolerance of risk. And it's not for me
to judge whether your tolerance is bad or not. My idea of my tolerance of risk extends to I will
get in a plane, but I'm not jumping out of it. His tolerance was I'm getting in a plane, and I am
jumping out of it. That doesn't mean to say that my tolerance is right or wrong. And his isn't
(44:55):
right or wrong. It's just different. And so what it needs to come to is a negotiation as to, all
right, well, this is your choice. How can we make this happen? We are not going to make this happen.
And people seem to get so caught up into what's the consequence if it goes wrong.
And yet there's not that dialogue as to what is actually the consequence if it goes right.
(45:19):
And for this guy, even just the news that he was going to be able to jump out of the plane and his
bashing his head against a brick wall trying to get somebody to listen. And all of a sudden,
you know, we've gone into a room and said, not only are we going to do it, we're actually going to,
you know, pay for it, and we're going to make it happen. He burst into tears. And we actually took
(45:42):
a video of it at the time with his permission, of course, it wasn't. Yeah. And I use it as a
as an education piece for those who really risk averse and when doing dignity of risk education,
as to, you know, this is a real example of what happens when you get it right.
Because like what Linda said, his words were, you allow me to do this, give me two weeks,
(46:06):
and if I drop dead, doesn't matter. But if I go out outside, I could fall down on the footpath,
and that would be sad. And it would be those two points resonate with me all the time. And I never
get sick of seeing that that vision. Because people lose the fact that what actually happens
(46:27):
if it goes right. How cool is that? When you've got your other people are making this decision
for you saying no, you can't. Well, you know what you can, and we'll make it happen. We'll
we'll help you to make it happen. And it's really cool. It's special. I really love that story.
Also, the video, I'd love to see it coming one day in time. But yeah, it's your whole point around,
(46:51):
why not? What's going to be that issue if it doesn't, if it does go ahead? Why do we have to
focus on not letting it go ahead? And so, you know, when it comes to dignity of risk, there are two
basic premises. And that is one is, is it going to, you know, is this person likely to suffer
real and permanent injury permanent or death? Apart from that, that's where the scope of practice
(47:17):
essentially goes out the window because, you know, significant permanent injury or death,
those are the two main premises of which, yeah, you've got to actually step in and maybe
do something with it. Anything else, from a legal perspective, I'm no lawyer, I'm no, you know,
I'm no, you know, police do not take this as legal advice. But ultimately, it's the person making
(47:41):
their own decision. And bad things can happen, but bad things can happen when you cross the road.
And especially around noticing to the clinical fraternity, I understand that you've got an
APRA registration and all that sort of stuff, but actually do your research and find out where that
extent starts and finishes. Because bad things happen, don't necessarily result in risk to
(48:07):
registration. Bad things happening under a controlled and thought out environment is actually
facilitating choice. And provided you can do that, they're in should not taking giving legal advice,
but it should, there should be no issues with your registration. So don't use your registration,
or don't use your own sort of bias as a means to stifle that choice. Because like I said,
(48:34):
you unlock that ability, and it is nothing short of magical. You've also if your risk tolerance
is that low that you can't, that you're not willing to take on that risk of the participant
jumping out of a plane, then refer them to a different company that might be more willing,
(48:56):
like you go well, I'm a teeny tiny provider, I really can't take on that risk. But at QSSS,
they're happy to do those sorts of things. So how about we can even split your funding,
you can have a few hours a week with them a few hours of week with us, and then we can organize
(49:18):
you to jump out of playing through them. Well, see that that's the that's the also common
misunderstanding because we are not we are not skydivers, and we are not expected to be
skydivers. That is not our expertise. So as soon as you pass it on pass that responsibility
on to the person who is the expert, so the skydiving company, your responsibility essentially
(49:41):
ceases. So you don't take the responsibility of the risk management process from, you know,
the skydivers as long as the person who is overseeing that risk has done their due diligence,
and done their risk assessments and all that sort of stuff has every single bit of information. So
this dude was 85 turning 85, I believe, had all sorts of, you know, bones and density issues,
(50:07):
a few other bits and pieces. But as long as all of that is given to the people who are charged to do
that, the experts in that specific field, with consultation with the GP who did actually say,
Yeah, it's probably not a good idea. But I see where you're going.
You know, even the GP was like, Yep, okay, bad idea. But you be you. So all of that sort of due
(50:30):
diligence, you're not actually, it's not your risk to take same as though that that activity person,
it wasn't her risk to absorb by saying, I couldn't possibly have this person on my conscience. Well,
that's not your risk to stifle. You've taken too much on. It's not you.
(50:51):
This is a really good example. Another one that was working with Hannah with one of her participants
to take them on a camp. And they really wanted to do two activities, which was go kayaking and get
to the beach and play in the sand with their daughter. Nice. That was two things. She wasn't
(51:13):
a very lightweight lady. So I had to go. So we met up with a kayaking team up on the sunny coast
and worked with them to for them to run the organization, and then work with them all of our
Surfers Saving Club to be able to bring in extra matting to add on to the existing matting to bring
them down to the shoreline with the hoist and wheelchair and everything else as well. I see.
(51:37):
So it wasn't necessarily me taking on that kayaking risk. It was me working with the
adventure provider to go, hey, look, this is a stipulation. This is what we have to work within.
Non-mobile needs a hoist to get in. So we had to get lovely little mechanical wheels and stuff to
put the front of the back so we could roll the hoist under. Just working out those different
(51:58):
differences to make it happen. And then essentially sharing the risk of it happening. So I'm not
taking on that risk. I'm engaging with a professional that does it. They've got their own liability and
even mapped out the whole kind of rescue plan with going into a hydrotherapy recession with
them to be able to get them comfortable with me to bring them back to shore if that was needed as
well. So it's kind of just looking more at not just the risk, but how do you mitigate
(52:24):
and get the activity to happen? It's calling on the respective experts in that particular,
all the different components of that risk. So in your instance, you would be, I would expect the
experts in the support, the actual on the ground support side of things. So that's where you sort
(52:46):
of coordinate with those others. The Malulabar Surf Club might be the owners of the risk when it
comes to the actual on the water sort of stuff or getting that person down to the water. The GP or
whoever else might be involved is in what the medical sort of consequential repercussions.
There are a whole bunch of different people who've got elements of that and provided each one
(53:11):
understands what the other person's doing, there's really no reason as to why a suitable solution
can't come up. But quite often it's the reason why the blockage is, is because the outcome
stops the process of actually thinking what are the steps. So the outcome might be this person
getting on water, there might be a medical condition as to why that might end up in
(53:37):
something potentially going bad. And then because there's something potentially going bad,
it's a bad idea, as opposed to if you chunk it down, all right, well, what is it? What are the parts?
This part, this part, this part, how can we first of all get this small part sorted, all right, then
move to the next, then move to the next, and move to the next. And then what you actually find is
(53:58):
that the risk that you thought it was is not actually as insurmountable as what it originally
seemed. The problem is that, this is a very personal opinion, I think that because we've got
all these unconscious biases going on in our brains, that in the case of the activities officer,
(54:18):
her unconscious bias was he's old and can't do such things. Now, you can imagine, there's a lot
of unconscious bias out there that just stops people from even getting to the point of having
a discussion around it. They just put it aside and say, no, that person can't do that for whatever
reason. We've got to smash that, really. We've got to start questioning that as a society.
(54:42):
Absolutely. Well, we've come to the point of the program where we are going to ask you,
in your ideal world, what would the future of the NDIS look like? Who wants to start?
That is a loaded question.
That's why we ask it. I think in an ideal world, there'd be less political reasons for things and
(55:09):
more focus on, as Australians, we need to ensure that we've got the adequate funds and systems in
place that support people who are invisible to society, whether they have a disability,
whether they're aged, whatever it is, that the system is such that it supports those people
(55:33):
with less complexity. It's way too complex at the moment for the average Joe Blow to even start
the process. We have to reduce the complexity so that everybody has the ability to access the
support they need, whatever that looks like for them. For me, there seems to be a significant
(55:58):
knowledge drain when it comes to the decision makers who are making the decisions of who gets
what, who needs a review for what. I always get nervous when entities make a recruitment drive.
By the sounds of it, there's a recruitment drive a lot in the NDIS. We've seen it in the aged care
(56:19):
space a lot as well. Back in our history, there was a recruitment drive for assessors and reviewers
and regulators and all that sort of stuff. What you got was people who didn't actually know
the industry in which they were regulating and were going on essentially a check sheet
and a policing model. The answer is no before you actually understand why it should be yes.
(56:43):
It's really just a brief rundown of one of the arguments that we've had just recently
around we were having to avoid a hospital admission, a social hospital admission. We continued with
supports. Now, this person had actually run out of funds, not because we were over-servicing,
(57:07):
it was mainly because this person had in their plan passive overnight. Because of this person's
disability, the support workers needed to get up quite a lot of times during the night. As is within
the sheds and all of the other sort of, you actually have to pay for that.
There ended up being a deficit of funds for legitimate reasons. We were dipping in our pocket
(57:34):
because it's the right thing to do. Then once the plan did eventually roll over and trying to
put our case forward that these were legitimate expenses, we were going to have to pay for that.
These were legitimate expenses. The response is it wasn't reasonable or necessary.
(57:58):
So I don't understand how, none of us really understand how a social hospital admission,
which would be significant, a significant financial drain on the entire system,
is not reasonable or necessary when it's actually cheaper to top up the funds a little bit to avoid
(58:20):
that hospital admission. Because what I can only imagine is it doesn't fit a criteria.
So if you've got a knowledge base within the NDIA regarding what is actually reasonable and
necessary as opposed to just rhetoric, and people are actually understood, and actually, we often
(58:44):
talk about if only the people making the decision could lay eyes on the person and actually meet
with the person so that they can really see for themselves as opposed to whether there might be a
word out of context on a report, something that is or isn't that requires a degree to understand.
(59:08):
But because it doesn't really fit that really strict box criteria as to meet the needs or
whatever, lay eyes and actually trust those around. But there seems to be so much distrust
in the industry right now, especially with the rhetoric that we're seeing in the media.
Everybody's a fraud. Everybody's doing out to get their mansions in their flash cars and all that
(59:33):
sort of stuff. Most of us are just trying to do the right thing. Most of us, the majority of us,
are just trying to do what's right. And it makes it really hard when the red tape prevents us and
punishes us for doing that. And it's just crazy. That's my long winded wish list of how to make it
(59:57):
better. I love that so much. I love both those answers. Definitely singing my song. Doing your
little happy dance in the podcast. Being thankful that we don't video record. Except for that one
live episode, which I have not watched yet. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast
(01:00:20):
today. We really appreciate your input and sharing your knowledge with our listeners.
And selling us the idea of uniquely simple. Uniquely simple. It is quite a refreshing idea.
Thanks so much guys. It's been awesome. It's been a pleasure. That's it. Thanks for having us.
(01:00:40):
That's time done. Wow. Okay. Thanks guys. Really appreciate it. Huzzah!
Thank you for listening. Please share with people you know.
Until next time, as the Green Brothers say, don't forget to be awesome.
We acknowledge the original owners of the land on which we podcast,
(00:03):
whose stories were told for thousands of years. Today we are recording in Mianjin. We pay our
respects to elders past and present who may be listening. Sovereignty was never ceded.
A quick note before we get started that there may be some swearing in today's podcast. If
you don't like swearing or usually listen with children in the car, you have been warned.
(00:35):
This episode of What in the NDIS Now is brought to you by Astalti. Astalti is the software solution
for NDIS professionals built by NDIS professionals. Astalti is my go-to software and Astalti
is trusted and loved by hundreds of other NDIS providers. I love how easy it is to use and how
(00:59):
it keeps all my participant information, notes and invoicing all in one place available to me anytime
from any device. Sign up now for your 14-day free trial. Head to astalti.com.au to sign up now.
See for yourself how much easier managing all your NDIS business needs are by using Astalti.
(01:24):
Thanks again to Astalti for sponsoring today's episode. You're listening to What in the NDIS
Now, a podcast where I, Hannah Redford, and my friend Sam Rosenbaum interview participants
and providers about all things NDIS. Hey, Sam, how are you going? Yeah, really good, Hannah.
(01:44):
How about yourself? Good. We're here recording today at the office of Kurumurra. So we really
appreciate the use of their office, but we're here to interview Linda and Greg from QSSS, which they
will explain shortly, and I'm really excited to hear from them. So welcome to the podcast.
(02:11):
Thank you for having us. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on, guys.
First to get started, what does QSS stand for? Well, that's a story. We love a good story. So QSSS
was born in 2009 and founded by Louise Lowe, and she named it something that no one can ever remember,
which is Queensland Support Services and Solutions. And we very quickly worked out that nobody ever
(02:37):
used that terminology, never could remember it, but we wanted to honour the heritage. So we kept
the heritage of the Q for Queensland, which is actually, when you look at it, it's a wheelchair,
a racing wheelchair with a path. The Q is a path. So that's kind of cool. And we kept the
SSS because everyone knows us as QSSS. So actually, officially, we are just QSSS. Lovely. Good little
(03:02):
backstory there. Yeah. So where did you each grow up? I grew up in a sleepy town of Wallingbar
in New South Wales, very close to Byron, Ballina, Austenville, Wismoor, for those Northern New South
Wales people. And I grew up in a little suburb called Mansfield, just on the south side of
Brisbane. I'm a Southie boy through and through. Yeah, pretty much grew up there till, yeah,
(03:27):
around 20. And then I saw, I'm not a nomad. I'm very boring. Just go from one, just two places.
That's it. And down a Logan way at the moment, or Logan Heights, because it's the nice part of Logan.
Linda, how did you get into the disability sector? I'm a nurse by trade. So I left sleepy
(03:49):
Wallingbar and went to Brisbane to start my nursing career. And I did a lot of work with children
as a young nurse. And a lot of them had disabilities. And I loved, absolutely loved that
job. If I was going back as a nurse, I'd be back in the paediatric hospital with kids. But
for many, many reasons, I ended up in aged care, worked my way up in a corporate world with some
(04:10):
really large companies in aged care, who also had disability arms, got a little bit more exposure in
that space. And then in a bit of a change of life career, getting out of the corporate world,
I actually met Louise, who was the founder is the word I'm trying to say, of QSSS. And,
(04:33):
you know, we got to talking and she eventually allowed me to buy the business. So that's how
I ended up in fully in the disability world. But I've had a very long history in that space.
Yes. Yeah. And Greg?
Well, I was sort of dragged along by the scruff of the neck by Linda, to be honest,
in a good way. So essentially, my background is in compliance. So that's, I've pretty much been in
(04:59):
that compliance space for a very long time. First of all, started out in the drug and alcohol space
around drug rehab. And also, you know, being the auditor and a few other, you know, and overseeing
the compliance of state based organizations, then as a, you know, just for kicks, just went into
(05:20):
sort of a job in age in the aged care space, thought that'd be a nice little career change,
that'd be pretty cool. And it was and so that's when I met Linda in the aged care space. And then,
you know, cut a long story short, I was sort of doing my own thing in the aged care space,
Linda had already become the CEO of QSS. And I was assisting with some grant writing,
(05:47):
because I'm heaps good at words and stuff and things. And so, yeah, helping to write some
grants for QSS. And then all of a sudden, I sort of get a phone call saying, Hey, do you want to
meet the board? It's like, sure. And, you know, and met the board. And then all of a sudden,
it's like, Hey, do you want to jump on board? And it's like, absolutely. And the reason is,
(06:10):
because it's really quite simple, because, you know, we've seen how bad things happen or bad
mindsets, you know, essentially, essentially stifle that individuality. And aged care, while
there are some really good things around aged care, the enabling independence and enabling choice and
control and the decision making in person centered care, all and all of that sort of stuff
(06:32):
is good in rhetoric. But in actuality, it's frustrating, because it's there's this whole
rampant paternalistic mindset. Because just because you're old, you don't, you know, and you
might have a diagnosis, meaning you can't actually make your own decisions, which is rubbish. Even
those who have, you know, even significant, you know, dementia actually have their ability to make
(06:54):
their own decisions. You know, it's just all it's the mindset of the person receiving it thinking,
well, actually, you've got a diagnosis, so you can't. And so, you know, we, with Linda and the
board, and now a really cool team around us, we've seen the bad. And now we're on a mission to try and,
you know, not essentially change the minds and sort of do things really in a unique and different
(07:19):
way so that we can enable and do what we can to not go down that path in the disability space and
and really open up those choices and decisions. And, you know, being a facilitator, not necessarily
the, you know, whenever I hear, you know, providers or people go, we allow choice, it's like,
oh, come on, you don't allow everybody's got the ability to make a choice. If as soon as you put
(07:45):
the allow in front of it, you're actually saying that you're the controller, and we're giving you
permission to have a choice. No, we're not, we're not allowing choice, we're hoping to facilitate
and enable them. And that's essentially where, you know, what we stand for, in trying to do our best
to do that. So, Greg, I first met you when we had some coffee. We did. And you explained to me about
(08:11):
how QSSS is providing support in a slightly different way. And I was really impressed with
the model. Yep. So can you explain a little bit to us about how that works? How that works? All
right. So our model is really, well, we call it uniquely simple, and it is really uniquely simple.
(08:37):
It's simple in concept, but what we find is hard to pull off. So to cut it, to really get to the
crux of it, where you find a lot of people in the industry or providers in the industry have
their proverbial pool of support workers in the wings, and you get a phone call saying,
from either a support coordinator or a participant saying, hey, I really like what you stand for,
(09:03):
can I have supports? Well, ordinarily, what we find is that it'll be, yeah, we've got people
ready in the wings for you. And so while that's great, in some respect, what it does, it actually
limits the person-centered sort of approach or the connection that you can make with people,
because ultimately, your pool of people is the availabilities of support worker connection is
(09:29):
down. So we are really big on connection. And so instead of having the proverbial pool of support
workers, what we do is that we really get to know what makes a participant tick. And that's not
necessarily around, you know, you're hearing when somebody describes a participant, hey, tell me
about Jim. And it's like, oh, yeah, Jim's a wheelchair user, Jim's got MS. And it's like,
(09:53):
no, that's not Jim. That's not Jim. Jim's actually, you know, he loves watching the footy.
He loves his coffee. He loves sort of going out. He loves his arts and crafts. He loves all of this
sort of stuff. It just so happens that he's a wheelchair user. So for some reason, we seem to
boil people down to a disability as opposed to who are they are to the core. And so what we try to
(10:15):
achieve is actually find out what that person is to the core. And when we, you know, have that
conversation and sit down and have a hopefully over a decent coffee, and know what that person is,
who that person is to a core, we actually create an ad all about that person. And if you have a
look at any of our job ads in support worker ads on QSSS, it's all about the person. The first,
(10:41):
you know, three quarters are all about what makes this person tick. And also their proverbial wish
list of qualities that they want to see out of a support worker. And we're not talking skill set.
We're actually talking, you know, somebody, you know, who resonates with me. So it might be,
you know, you might want somebody who enjoys their 40 or enjoys their music or whatever that
picture looks like. And so we'll spend three quarters of the ad describing that person.
(11:05):
And then maybe a quarter based on the technical side of things of, you know, needs to have your
manual handling, needs to be, you know, have an understanding of stoma or whatever, you know,
that technical side of things. But it's all about that connection. And so what that does,
we'll post that up on on on Seek and Indeed and all the other platforms, all at our cost. So we
(11:26):
don't charge anything to the participant at all. The only thing we charge the participant is boots
on the ground. So when the support worker starts, that's that's essentially when we charge below
the price guide. But what that does, the ad does is actually enable that connection between support
worker or applicant and participant even before they even met. Because when you read the ad,
(11:49):
it's sort of like a potential applicant goes, that sounds like a really cool dude. I think that I can
work with this person. I think that this would be a really good opportunity for me and for this
this person that I'm applying for, to create that connection and really do some really cool stuff.
And so as opposed to come work for disability, are us. Yeah. And, you know, I don't know what
(12:10):
I'm getting myself into, but I just want a job. Yeah, that's not what we're after. And so from
that we will screen, we'll do our own screening, we'll call it the, excuse the language, we call
it the serial killer and asshole test. Yeah, that's essentially is serial killer. So I am stealing
(12:32):
that. We're going to add that into our recruitment phase. Nice. My business partner is going to kill
me. The reason why I call that is because we don't want to be the roadblock to people getting
applicants. So we can try and find the unicorn, what we call the unicorn, the ethereal sort of
support worker who ticks every single box that generally doesn't exist. Or we can at least find
(12:55):
out if they're a decent person. What we're looking for is a decent person and do they tick the
non-negotiables that the participant has actually asked. So that's essentially the ticket. And
there's a very good reason for that. And that is that it's not up to us to choose. Correct. It is
the client's choice. So we've got to make sure that the dangerous ones are not presented. But
(13:17):
we aren't the ones who say Greg's not the right person. Right. So it's really important that the
client sees all of that and has the option to interview, meet, trial if they want to,
and select their own team, not us. Yeah. And so once we do that test, we will give the profiles
(13:39):
of the shortlisted applicants to the participant. The participant goes, all right, I really like the
idea of applicant number one, not so much two or three, really like the idea of applicant four,
five, but not six. And so then we'll organise meet and greets, whether that's a formal interview
process, whether that's a team's meeting, whether that's a phone call, whatever that picture looks
(14:03):
like, whatever is comfortable to the participant. And that is the ability for both the participant
and the support worker to get a feel as to whether they can work with each other. This is before we
even start the actual onboarding, whether they can work with each other, because once again,
that connection is the most imperative. And then the participant will go to us, yeah, bring on number
(14:25):
one, not so much number four, but yes to number six. I think I've got those numbers right.
And then we'll start the onboarding, the training, and then boots on the ground. And that's when,
yeah, that's when we start the support. Yeah. So when you described that to me,
I thought this is great. And I think there are some providers who do some aspects of this, like
(14:56):
they will go to the market and say, we need someone who is something like this for this
particular participant, but then they miss the rest of it, which is the interviewing, the trial,
which I was like, oh, this makes so much sense. And then the last bit of it that I really loved
(15:21):
was one of the things you said is we find that then the participant and the support worker have
a greater success of longevity, of working together. And you find that you have participants who are
going to go through fewer people because they are happy with the people they essentially recruited
(15:46):
for their team. There is ownership there by the participant because they've made their choice,
but there's that relationship. There's also that connection for the support worker. So the
connection starts at reading of the ad because they read an ad, they connect with an ad,
the person that the ad's about, and then they go and meet that person. So it's almost like a dating
(16:07):
website in a way because you're matching people with the right... Without the creeps.
That sounds awful, but it's a matching service. So you want people to, and then they almost have
to break up if they leak. Support workers have to let someone know that they're not going to be the
support worker, the client know, and that's pretty hard. So I've been in the industry way too many
(16:32):
years. It's over 30 years now, and this is the lowest ever turnover rate in staff, ever.
That's quite phenomenal.
It's phenomenal. It's significantly lower.
Especially in this industry. From all industries, it is a breakup. And it's not by design. We're
not trying to keep people hostage. Because when you make that connection, it's really hard to
(16:57):
break that connection.
Having said all of that, when someone's starting out with building their team,
there is a bit of a turnover in that first couple of weeks, two months maybe, depending on the
client, because they'll try somebody and it won't quite work. And that's okay. That support worker
might connect with another client somewhere else, but it's not right for that particular client.
(17:20):
And that's okay. We just work through that until they get their solid, what we call a solid team
around them. One that can cover all of the shift fills, all of the sickness and the annual leave
and all of those things. They really manage between themselves then, which is really cool.
And then you also don't have the support workers, what we call the milk run. You see a lot of
(17:43):
support workers going from one client, a participant to another participant, to another
participant, all in succession. And then if you're later on in the day, then good luck getting a
support worker on time, because you've got all these people in front of you. We don't have that
proverbial milk run either, because it's their team. Sure, we might have support workers who
(18:05):
might be on a few different teams, but we will manage that situation. Because since there's
other people on the team as well, we can make sure that that milk run just doesn't happen.
And so when a participant wants a support worker, that's when they get a support worker.
We can't actually fit you in at that time. How about this time? No, that's not it.
(18:28):
You want a support worker at this time, provided it's within the rules that we all work under.
Then there's no reason why, and providers, and your funding, and your budget, and all the other
technical stuff, provided we can make it happen, it's going to happen.
Yeah, this is a really interesting concept to me, especially from the employee experience,
and from a staffing point of view. So if a support worker is coming on board, do they just look at
(18:54):
one participant, or do they potentially have multiple participants that they might be connected
with? It completely varies, depending on the individual and how much they want.
They want to work, and how many clients like them. At the end of the day, they've got to sell
themselves. So there is some of our star performers out there actually do know many of our clients,
(19:16):
and they're actually in hot demand to be on a team. We're very careful about that, though.
We don't want to spread people too thin that they're not available to the team,
every team that they're on. So that's really important. So that's a bit of a balancing act
behind the scenes to make sure that that's not happening, but they can. So some will have a
couple of clients that they go to see. Some will just be just for that client and nobody else.
(19:41):
Okay. So it sort of works a little bit flexibly on that individual's financial needs ultimately,
because that's why we all have a job. That's right.
So if you're sort of wanting full-time, we've got that opportunity versus...
Yeah, some of them work more than full-time. We try not to do that.
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes we have to save support workers from themselves,
(20:03):
because they want to, you know, just give me all the hours you got. Well, you know,
we've got a responsibility as a responsible employer to actually manage your workload,
regardless of whether you want to manage it or not. We'll make sure that we don't burn you out.
But our workforce is casualized because, you know, we need that... the participants need that
(20:23):
flexibility more to the point. As soon as you've got a contracted workforce from a support worker
perspective, then you've got your minimum hours that you need to meet. And then if, say, for
example, a participant goes on holidays or goes to hospital, whatever, then we essentially have to
(20:43):
divvy out support workers who, you know, to other participants who they might not have met before.
And, you know, it sort of goes all against our model. So by having that casualized workforce,
we've got that flexibility. We're not beholden to any minimum hours. And we do like to look
after our support workers as much as we can, but ultimately it's the participant who chooses the
(21:06):
hours in which they get. And we don't, as an organization, we don't stipulate, you know,
we hear a lot around, you know, we're not going to take participants on board who are less than 8,
10, 12 hours a week or whatever. You know, we don't do that either.
We had 20 hours a week or two ago.
Oh, 20. Yeah.
That blew my mind.
(21:27):
Yeah. We don't take participants who are less than 20 hours a week. And it's like,
what are you doing? Like, that's crazy.
Yeah. That is one of my bug bears. Or they, you know, some of my participants
might only want a two hour shift while they get to know someone.
Yep.
And people go, no, our minimum is five hours. And you're just like, okay, well, that's not going to
(21:53):
work, is it?
No, it's not going to work for the person. It's not going to work for the plan either,
because then you find a plan has been siphoned so significantly that by the end of the plan,
they've run out of funds and then you need to go for a change of circumstance or whatever.
And we've had instances where, you know, hey, this person's run out of funds.
Well, and the NDIS pretty much goes, well, that's your problem.
(22:13):
Yeah.
Very common comment.
Yeah. It's not our problem. That's yours. You didn't manage the fund properly.
You over-serviced the client.
Yeah. You over-serviced the client is a common sort of thing. Well, no, we have a responsibility.
Actually, the client chooses their supports.
Well, that's not us.
Yeah.
I've had this big bug there for quite a while where the agency goes and gives $100,000,
(22:37):
$200,000 a year plans without providing a mechanism to understand how to budget properly.
And yes, we sort of say that this is a mix of a support coordinator's versus a plan manager's
role, but not everyone gets support coordination in the first place. And forecasting and planning
(22:59):
for spend is most definitely not a job of a plan manager, which I actually had a support coordinator
tell me in the meeting that I should go ask the plan manager because that was their job,
which I politely told them for a very extended rant to relook at their job definitions,
essentially, because that is their job.
But we're also not empowering the participants that generically are low-income Centrelink,
(23:27):
$500, $600 a week if they're lucky to learn how to budget with access to hundreds of thousands
of dollars to work out how to spend, how to get their life sorted. And they just go,
here, there's a lovely big figure. I want this, which is perfectly logical in their decision
and needing support, but there's no support for them or guidance in how to plan out that support,
(23:51):
what adding two hours on every Monday on top of a four-hour shift would look like and how that
would impact in the long term. It's just not something that's...
Well, let's face it, some of the packages we see in disability sector, not aged care,
but in disability sector are bigger than many small businesses. And we're asking people to
know how to manage that fund in a way that gets them through the period of the dates for the plan.
(24:18):
That's a big thing. I think we underestimate that.
Yeah. And sometimes we don't even know what that... we just get word of mouth that this is the figure.
We don't have any visibility. We don't have a right to that visibility. We would like to be
able to have that, but ultimately, there's only so much that people are willing to share. And I
totally respect and understand that, but it comes as sometimes a surprise at the end.
(24:40):
It's like, where's it all gone? We're doing what we're told to do. I don't know. No, you didn't.
You've mentioned aged care a little bit now. So you do NDIS and aged care. And I also saw on your
website that you do veteran affairs and a few other things.
Yeah. So we aren't an approved provider in aged care, but we can broker our services to a provider.
(25:02):
So if there was a participant out there that was on an aged care funding and they really wanted
QSSS as their provider, then we can contract through third parties, basically, to deliver that
service. Aged care is tricky in that the funds are really pathetic. I mean, Australia needs to
fundamentally change the way they think and feel about people who are aged because there's not
(25:24):
enough funding for them.
Nowhere near enough.
Nowhere near enough. If any of you have got ageing parents, you'll know all about that.
Yeah, I've just lived and breathed the last five years of home care packages and then aged care
packages.
There you go. Max's.
And detrimental service provision and lack of service provision and lack of management of
(25:46):
service provision.
Yeah.
And then all the administration fees on top of the package and everything. So for all the
listeners out there, pretty much the maximum of any package is around $56ish. Don't quote me on
the...
I think it's just gone up.
$54, $56 around that. That is the highest package that is available for home care. Any needs above
(26:09):
that and you're looking at, unfortunately, resi care.
And then you've got admin fees of about 12 to 15% and management fees of approximately the same
amount.
Yep. And that's for everything. That's for your allied health, your personal cares, your nursing,
that 50-odd minus admin fees needs to cover everything.
(26:29):
Which is a very hard task to achieve.
Oh, yeah.
What made that decision from you guys as a business to hit those multiple areas rather than just
focusing on NDIS? And how has that impacted the overall viability and then also part of your
strategy planning for that?
Yeah. So the short answer is we focus mainly on disability. Our heritage is that we had a couple
(26:56):
of clients in the DISAOA world. So they're people with a disability who are funded under DISAOA,
Disability Supports for Older Australians, because they were over 65 when NDIS came in. So they're
still on our books and we'll continue to love and support them through their journey because that's
not easy either. We thought about becoming an aged care provider, but really you've got to be in it
(27:24):
or not in it, because it's a big, big thing to become a...
It's a behemoth.
Yeah, it's huge. Huge. Which is what Greg started with us looking at. In the end, we decided we
wouldn't do that, that we would focus purely on disability. If people really want our services in
the aged care world, we will help them to do that, but that's very minimal for what we do. DVA is a
(27:47):
bit similar. We've just had a client just recently transition from NDIS to DVA and we've become the
attendant, I think they call it attendant care provider for him. And that's fine. We can do that.
We're registered for that sort of thing, but it's not our core business. Our core business is NDIS.
And we want to do that. We've made a specific business decision to stick to our lane in terms
(28:12):
of support in NDIS. We don't do support coordination. We don't do SDAs. We don't do properties.
We work with partners in that space. So if people are coming to QSSS wanting to find an SDA home,
we'll help them through our partners, but we don't do that. We stick to what we're really good at
and do that really well. And if we can do one thing, if we can influence one other provider
(28:36):
to deliver a support service like we do, then we've done our job because nobody's doing it.
And I personally, as a support coordinator, love, love, love providers that just stay in their lane
and just do the one thing because then you know they're doing that one thing really well,
because they do that day in, day out, and they don't try to spread themselves too thin
(29:00):
by trying to do 20 other things as well. And inevitably they do the other 20 things poorly.
Yes.
I mean, yeah, it's the whole sort of conflict of interest debate as well. You know, we've had
(29:22):
discussions about expanding and all that sort of stuff, but ultimately, like what you're saying,
we feel we're really good at what we do. So why would we want to jeopardize that?
Why would we want to sort of, you know, essentially dilute what we're doing really well
and trying to be essentially a master of none? So, you know, we do, we've got a little bit of a
(29:45):
cynical view when it comes to, you know, we see providers go, and we've got support coordination,
we've got service provision, we've got allied health, we've got nursing, we've got SDAs,
we've got SILs, we've got everything under the sun, but, you know, choice and control,
yeah, everybody gets a choice. And it's like, well, yeah, but I'm sure there's a little bit
of leading the witness, Your Honour. I'm sure that there would be a little bit of that. And
(30:09):
I wouldn't mind so much if you actually, you know, if somebody comes to you under a banner of,
say, support coordination. All right, so you come under support coordination, that means that that's
the only thing you are engaged with that person with. That doesn't limit choice and control,
because there are thousands of other providers out there who can do other parts of the business.
(30:29):
But if we can sort of have a, you know, understanding within the industry of one person,
one sort of, you know, reason for going, and we'll facilitate everything else, then that's cool.
But to sort of, you know, then have support coordination, service provision, and essentially,
it makes it a lot harder, I would expect, from a participant to leave, because ultimately,
(30:52):
if I leave this arm of the business, then in my brain, I'd be going, well, that jeopardises
every other single service that I get from this person. And so essentially, I'm sort of locked in,
as opposed to if I'm just restricted to accessing this service for this arm, and everybody else is
somewhere else, doesn't matter where it is, that's the true choice and control. And that's also the
(31:17):
true choice and control to leave, as well, without the jeopardising of the other parts of the
business. So it's, you know, we've sort of stuck to our lane, and we were passionate about that.
Now, another thing I wanted to pick up was that you earlier said that you charge below the price
(31:38):
guide. Yes. Or below the maximum. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you do that? That's really simple,
really simple, uniquely simple. Uniquely simple. We don't need to. So we charge less than the
NDIS rate, which is a maximum. Yes. We pay our support workers more than the award. We don't pay
(32:01):
for things that are unnecessary. We have no properties, we have no cars. We pay reasonable
salaries to our executive team, but they're small. Our overheads are very low. So if I compare our
overhead rate to the corporate world, we're less than half of what the corporate world are paying
in overheads. Right? So there's no need. And we don't charge any admin fees. We only charge for
(32:29):
every hour of support work that goes into the home, whenever that is, you know, whatever rate
that is, you know. And we still make, we are not, the owners of this business are not in it to make
our mansions. We're in it to make a fair and equitable living, yes. But we're not, and we're
not here to lose money. But we're not here to line our pockets. We're here to deliver a support
(32:52):
service to vulnerable Australians that deserve better. And that's what we're doing. So we'll
always be slightly under in that way. Yeah. And so when it comes to the actual sort of
labour that's involved in setting somebody up, you know, the boots on the ground, it can be
hundreds of hours worth of labour just to get that first support worker on the ground, not to mention
(33:18):
the cost of seek ads, which I think around a smidge and under $4.50 a pop, just to put a
support worker seek ad. And given that we're putting seek ads for every single participant,
there's a lot of costs that are involved. And that's why even though the concept is uniquely
simple, it is in reality, it's not that easy to pull off well. And so, but even still, because
(33:46):
we don't have, like what Linda was saying, the bricks and mortar, the vehicles, the uniforms,
all of that sort of stuff, we absorb those costs and we can do it. And something we're passionate
about, we don't charge the administration fee, the set up fees, all of the other fees, just hours
that support workers are doing the things that they're doing in the home. And point to note,
(34:07):
we've been doing it since 2009, well before NDIS was in play. So this model was set up well before
the NDIS. It fits beautifully into the intent of the NDIS. Yes, but it's not because of the NDIS.
It's because the people who have been involved with QSSS, both Louise and us, as the new owners,
(34:31):
are passionate about. We actually want to disrupt the industry. We actually want it to change as a
whole. Using your collective sort of background, I'd really like to understand whether or not you've
done kind of a bit of a cost analysis of journey versus kind of your standard operating model where
it's recruit, put in place, they leave, repeat that process for hire and keep trying to keep that
(34:56):
retention rate going. But with your model, it kind of seems like the middle part of support workers
leaving and coming, trying to replace that, that cost seems to have kind of decreased with the
model and the approach that you guys are going for. Have you sort of mod like? No, no, because we hate
the corporate thinking and the corporate world. We know it works because we're making the business
(35:23):
is not losing money. Right. We know it's working. We haven't done any cost analysis to that degree,
but the indicators are there. So the fact that the overheads are so much lower. So we monitor
some KPIs, billable hours, that's going up all the time. We monitor turnover rates, which is
(35:49):
consistently low. We can see when things are a bit out of kilter because those things will fluctuate
when it's a bit out of kilter and we have to bring it back and say, no, we've got to get back to
basics, we call it, but get the core back in place. But as for doing cost modeling, no,
no, I haven't really done it. It'd be very interesting to sort of say it. Yeah, it would
(36:11):
be a good research study actually to get to know that. I'm thinking students, students.
Outsource it. A PhD for somebody. Yeah. Would actually be a good PhD for somebody. Yeah,
it'd be interesting. Any PhDs for it. As the candidates out there, please get in touch.
That's right. It's qtriples.com.au. But yeah, so it's really kind of a bit of an interesting
(36:36):
model and kind of the centre point from keeping it very participant focused rather than necessarily
we're running a business as well. It's actually participant driven. Yeah. That's what we like to
say because it's more than just focus. I mean, the corporate world will talk about client-centred
care. One, we don't care for, we support people to live their life how they choose to live it,
(37:00):
not how we think they should live it. Two, it's about not being corporate. It's about being there
for the participant. Right? So what got me out of the corporate world was I was sick of sitting in
front of clients, hearing complaints because they were waiting enormous number of hours for
(37:25):
people to come through their door because they're doing the proverbial milk run. So starting at eight
and got 10 clients before midday. So they were lucky for the support worker to come through the
door on time and then they don't know their name. And Linda, you want me to get undressed
and do very personal things with this person I don't even know the name of? And do you think
(37:50):
I could go back and change that in the corporate world? It's like turning an ocean liner. It was so
slow. So I left the corporate world to try and make a difference and discovered Louise doing this
model in QSSS and said, that's what we've been trying to do, but we couldn't do it. I used to
(38:10):
say to the CEO, we need to Uberise this company. We need to close it down over here and open it up
as another completely different company because you're so caught up in corporate overheads and
EBAs and unions telling you how you have to do your business that you can't actually do it. You
(38:34):
can't set up self-managed teams because the system won't allow you to do it. So you have to reopen
it over here. Well, Louise was opening it over here and all I had to do was say, yes, I'll do it.
And I guess the other part that was doing my head in was,
each entity has its own risk profile and its appetite for risk. And in aged care,
(38:57):
it just goes OTT. It goes just absolutely over the top. And so it became an issue whereby
because of this risk aversion, risk avoidance, it was actually stifling so much choice and control
and decision making and all of that sort of stuff. And bashing my head against a brick wall, being
(39:20):
the compliance guy who is actually supposed to be on that side of the desk saying, you can't do
that. I'm the one sort of trying to say, hey, why can't this guy have an electric blanket because
he's really cold at night and a hot pack isn't just doing it. And it goes all the way up to the
executive just to get an electric blanket. And it took two months for a person in a residential care
(39:46):
who has the ability to do their own stuff and everything in between and was finding that he
couldn't sleep because of an electric blanket, but an electric blanket is too much risk. You can wash
electric blankets, you can do all sorts of other, and it just went all the way to the top. So the
amount of waste from even just a labor perspective and wasted effort and wasted oxygen is just
(40:10):
for what reason? And so that's the other thing that really gravitated me towards,
it wasn't even a thought. It's just when I was asked to jump on board, it's absolutely because
I could, having done a lot of that grant writing that when we were starting to explore the aged
care, I could see exactly what the situation was. And even I was going, holy crap, this is what we've
(40:34):
been trying to achieve for a very long time. And because of all the red tape and all the risk
aversion, it just wasn't, there was no appetite because it was seen as too much risk. Well,
it's not, it's actually just human decency. It's just exactly how it should be. It doesn't make
sense as to why we put all these blockages when we have no right to put blockages on them. And it's
(41:00):
just crazy. We did, when we were kicking off with our company, I went through, because I'm a risk
background as well, I went through a process with my business partner, Jason, to develop our,
our starting point was actually our risk acceptance or risk tolerance statements, essentially.
And we went very specific in looking in our disability supports around, because we do events
(41:22):
management and to do kind of event activities and programs, very much looking at what our tolerance
and our level of acceptance from risk for our participants. And we went with a very high
tolerance base, purely around the two fundamental principles of choice control, and then also
dignity of risk. Because if it's not going to kill you and you really want to do it, why should you
(41:44):
not be able to? Exactly. That's what sent one CEO under the desk and catatonic, because one of our
aged care clients in a nursing home wanted to jump out of a plane. Oh bless. I must admit,
when I was thinking about an elderly man jumping out of a plane and landing, I'm thinking there
(42:05):
may not be a bone not broken when you land, to be honest, you know, you're aged, you're frail. But I
sat down with him and I said, you do know that if you jump out of this plane, you may die. Because
I wanted to hear what his response was. And he said, Linda, I could walk out that door, which was
just outside in a courtyard and trip on that step. And I could hit my head and die. But I wouldn't
(42:30):
be happy. But if I jump out of a plane and die, my one last wish, because he'd done so many other
risk taking activities in his life, I'll die happy. And I said, well, how can I stop that? 100%.
And so the CEO, I said to the CEO, we've got a client who, a resident who would like to jump
out of a plane, chasing under the table, because he was a lawyer. But to give him credit, though,
(42:58):
he said yes. He said yes in the end when we talked him through it. And he offered to sponsor some of
the costs. So that was pretty cool. If I was at home, I've got a smile on my face this whole story.
Yeah, but that was a long process of beforehand staff was saying no, no, no, no, no. And the
activities officer that was on that day, I said, why are you saying no? And she said, gave a reason.
(43:23):
I can't even remember what reason she gave. Because she couldn't possibly have it on her conscience
if something went wrong. And I said, do you want to jump out of the plane? She said, yeah. I said,
no, you can't. Just looked away. She goes, why not? I said, because I said you can't. She goes, but
I said, that's what you're doing to our resident. Stop it. He has a right to live his life the way
(43:47):
he chooses to live it. Doesn't matter whether he's aged, doesn't matter whether he's living in a
residential care. And it's no different in the disability sector. People have a right to live
their lives how they want to live it, not how we think they should. And it's not up to us to judge.
It's up to us to facilitate. Yes, tell them the risks. Talk to them about the risks if there's
risks. But don't ever stop somebody. That's their choice. Yeah. So this is another area in which I'm
(44:12):
really passionate about. And I've done so many different talks to so many different rooms around
the whole Dignity of Risk concept. And the problem is that it's actually seen as a concept, not
necessarily a series of steps. And the series of steps are essentially, well, how, first of all,
not why is this bad? It's how can we make this happen in the most safest way possible?
(44:32):
And also the understanding that everybody's got a different tolerance of risk. And it's not for me
to judge whether your tolerance is bad or not. My idea of my tolerance of risk extends to I will
get in a plane, but I'm not jumping out of it. His tolerance was I'm getting in a plane, and I am
jumping out of it. That doesn't mean to say that my tolerance is right or wrong. And his isn't
(44:55):
right or wrong. It's just different. And so what it needs to come to is a negotiation as to, all
right, well, this is your choice. How can we make this happen? We are not going to make this happen.
And people seem to get so caught up into what's the consequence if it goes wrong.
And yet there's not that dialogue as to what is actually the consequence if it goes right.
(45:19):
And for this guy, even just the news that he was going to be able to jump out of the plane and his
bashing his head against a brick wall trying to get somebody to listen. And all of a sudden,
you know, we've gone into a room and said, not only are we going to do it, we're actually going to,
you know, pay for it, and we're going to make it happen. He burst into tears. And we actually took
(45:42):
a video of it at the time with his permission, of course, it wasn't. Yeah. And I use it as a
as an education piece for those who really risk averse and when doing dignity of risk education,
as to, you know, this is a real example of what happens when you get it right.
Because like what Linda said, his words were, you allow me to do this, give me two weeks,
(46:06):
and if I drop dead, doesn't matter. But if I go out outside, I could fall down on the footpath,
and that would be sad. And it would be those two points resonate with me all the time. And I never
get sick of seeing that that vision. Because people lose the fact that what actually happens
(46:27):
if it goes right. How cool is that? When you've got your other people are making this decision
for you saying no, you can't. Well, you know what you can, and we'll make it happen. We'll
we'll help you to make it happen. And it's really cool. It's special. I really love that story.
Also, the video, I'd love to see it coming one day in time. But yeah, it's your whole point around,
(46:51):
why not? What's going to be that issue if it doesn't, if it does go ahead? Why do we have to
focus on not letting it go ahead? And so, you know, when it comes to dignity of risk, there are two
basic premises. And that is one is, is it going to, you know, is this person likely to suffer
real and permanent injury permanent or death? Apart from that, that's where the scope of practice
(47:17):
essentially goes out the window because, you know, significant permanent injury or death,
those are the two main premises of which, yeah, you've got to actually step in and maybe
do something with it. Anything else, from a legal perspective, I'm no lawyer, I'm no, you know,
I'm no, you know, police do not take this as legal advice. But ultimately, it's the person making
(47:41):
their own decision. And bad things can happen, but bad things can happen when you cross the road.
And especially around noticing to the clinical fraternity, I understand that you've got an
APRA registration and all that sort of stuff, but actually do your research and find out where that
extent starts and finishes. Because bad things happen, don't necessarily result in risk to
(48:07):
registration. Bad things happening under a controlled and thought out environment is actually
facilitating choice. And provided you can do that, they're in should not taking giving legal advice,
but it should, there should be no issues with your registration. So don't use your registration,
or don't use your own sort of bias as a means to stifle that choice. Because like I said,
(48:34):
you unlock that ability, and it is nothing short of magical. You've also if your risk tolerance
is that low that you can't, that you're not willing to take on that risk of the participant
jumping out of a plane, then refer them to a different company that might be more willing,
(48:56):
like you go well, I'm a teeny tiny provider, I really can't take on that risk. But at QSSS,
they're happy to do those sorts of things. So how about we can even split your funding,
you can have a few hours a week with them a few hours of week with us, and then we can organize
(49:18):
you to jump out of playing through them. Well, see that that's the that's the also common
misunderstanding because we are not we are not skydivers, and we are not expected to be
skydivers. That is not our expertise. So as soon as you pass it on pass that responsibility
on to the person who is the expert, so the skydiving company, your responsibility essentially
(49:41):
ceases. So you don't take the responsibility of the risk management process from, you know,
the skydivers as long as the person who is overseeing that risk has done their due diligence,
and done their risk assessments and all that sort of stuff has every single bit of information. So
this dude was 85 turning 85, I believe, had all sorts of, you know, bones and density issues,
(50:07):
a few other bits and pieces. But as long as all of that is given to the people who are charged to do
that, the experts in that specific field, with consultation with the GP who did actually say,
Yeah, it's probably not a good idea. But I see where you're going.
You know, even the GP was like, Yep, okay, bad idea. But you be you. So all of that sort of due
(50:30):
diligence, you're not actually, it's not your risk to take same as though that that activity person,
it wasn't her risk to absorb by saying, I couldn't possibly have this person on my conscience. Well,
that's not your risk to stifle. You've taken too much on. It's not you.
(50:51):
This is a really good example. Another one that was working with Hannah with one of her participants
to take them on a camp. And they really wanted to do two activities, which was go kayaking and get
to the beach and play in the sand with their daughter. Nice. That was two things. She wasn't
(51:13):
a very lightweight lady. So I had to go. So we met up with a kayaking team up on the sunny coast
and worked with them to for them to run the organization, and then work with them all of our
Surfers Saving Club to be able to bring in extra matting to add on to the existing matting to bring
them down to the shoreline with the hoist and wheelchair and everything else as well. I see.
(51:37):
So it wasn't necessarily me taking on that kayaking risk. It was me working with the
adventure provider to go, hey, look, this is a stipulation. This is what we have to work within.
Non-mobile needs a hoist to get in. So we had to get lovely little mechanical wheels and stuff to
put the front of the back so we could roll the hoist under. Just working out those different
(51:58):
differences to make it happen. And then essentially sharing the risk of it happening. So I'm not
taking on that risk. I'm engaging with a professional that does it. They've got their own liability and
even mapped out the whole kind of rescue plan with going into a hydrotherapy recession with
them to be able to get them comfortable with me to bring them back to shore if that was needed as
well. So it's kind of just looking more at not just the risk, but how do you mitigate
(52:24):
and get the activity to happen? It's calling on the respective experts in that particular,
all the different components of that risk. So in your instance, you would be, I would expect the
experts in the support, the actual on the ground support side of things. So that's where you sort
(52:46):
of coordinate with those others. The Malulabar Surf Club might be the owners of the risk when it
comes to the actual on the water sort of stuff or getting that person down to the water. The GP or
whoever else might be involved is in what the medical sort of consequential repercussions.
There are a whole bunch of different people who've got elements of that and provided each one
(53:11):
understands what the other person's doing, there's really no reason as to why a suitable solution
can't come up. But quite often it's the reason why the blockage is, is because the outcome
stops the process of actually thinking what are the steps. So the outcome might be this person
getting on water, there might be a medical condition as to why that might end up in
(53:37):
something potentially going bad. And then because there's something potentially going bad,
it's a bad idea, as opposed to if you chunk it down, all right, well, what is it? What are the parts?
This part, this part, this part, how can we first of all get this small part sorted, all right, then
move to the next, then move to the next, and move to the next. And then what you actually find is
(53:58):
that the risk that you thought it was is not actually as insurmountable as what it originally
seemed. The problem is that, this is a very personal opinion, I think that because we've got
all these unconscious biases going on in our brains, that in the case of the activities officer,
(54:18):
her unconscious bias was he's old and can't do such things. Now, you can imagine, there's a lot
of unconscious bias out there that just stops people from even getting to the point of having
a discussion around it. They just put it aside and say, no, that person can't do that for whatever
reason. We've got to smash that, really. We've got to start questioning that as a society.
(54:42):
Absolutely. Well, we've come to the point of the program where we are going to ask you,
in your ideal world, what would the future of the NDIS look like? Who wants to start?
That is a loaded question.
That's why we ask it. I think in an ideal world, there'd be less political reasons for things and
(55:09):
more focus on, as Australians, we need to ensure that we've got the adequate funds and systems in
place that support people who are invisible to society, whether they have a disability,
whether they're aged, whatever it is, that the system is such that it supports those people
(55:33):
with less complexity. It's way too complex at the moment for the average Joe Blow to even start
the process. We have to reduce the complexity so that everybody has the ability to access the
support they need, whatever that looks like for them. For me, there seems to be a significant
(55:58):
knowledge drain when it comes to the decision makers who are making the decisions of who gets
what, who needs a review for what. I always get nervous when entities make a recruitment drive.
By the sounds of it, there's a recruitment drive a lot in the NDIS. We've seen it in the aged care
(56:19):
space a lot as well. Back in our history, there was a recruitment drive for assessors and reviewers
and regulators and all that sort of stuff. What you got was people who didn't actually know
the industry in which they were regulating and were going on essentially a check sheet
and a policing model. The answer is no before you actually understand why it should be yes.
(56:43):
It's really just a brief rundown of one of the arguments that we've had just recently
around we were having to avoid a hospital admission, a social hospital admission. We continued with
supports. Now, this person had actually run out of funds, not because we were over-servicing,
(57:07):
it was mainly because this person had in their plan passive overnight. Because of this person's
disability, the support workers needed to get up quite a lot of times during the night. As is within
the sheds and all of the other sort of, you actually have to pay for that.
There ended up being a deficit of funds for legitimate reasons. We were dipping in our pocket
(57:34):
because it's the right thing to do. Then once the plan did eventually roll over and trying to
put our case forward that these were legitimate expenses, we were going to have to pay for that.
These were legitimate expenses. The response is it wasn't reasonable or necessary.
(57:58):
So I don't understand how, none of us really understand how a social hospital admission,
which would be significant, a significant financial drain on the entire system,
is not reasonable or necessary when it's actually cheaper to top up the funds a little bit to avoid
(58:20):
that hospital admission. Because what I can only imagine is it doesn't fit a criteria.
So if you've got a knowledge base within the NDIA regarding what is actually reasonable and
necessary as opposed to just rhetoric, and people are actually understood, and actually, we often
(58:44):
talk about if only the people making the decision could lay eyes on the person and actually meet
with the person so that they can really see for themselves as opposed to whether there might be a
word out of context on a report, something that is or isn't that requires a degree to understand.
(59:08):
But because it doesn't really fit that really strict box criteria as to meet the needs or
whatever, lay eyes and actually trust those around. But there seems to be so much distrust
in the industry right now, especially with the rhetoric that we're seeing in the media.
Everybody's a fraud. Everybody's doing out to get their mansions in their flash cars and all that
(59:33):
sort of stuff. Most of us are just trying to do the right thing. Most of us, the majority of us,
are just trying to do what's right. And it makes it really hard when the red tape prevents us and
punishes us for doing that. And it's just crazy. That's my long winded wish list of how to make it
(59:57):
better. I love that so much. I love both those answers. Definitely singing my song. Doing your
little happy dance in the podcast. Being thankful that we don't video record. Except for that one
live episode, which I have not watched yet. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast
(01:00:20):
today. We really appreciate your input and sharing your knowledge with our listeners.
And selling us the idea of uniquely simple. Uniquely simple. It is quite a refreshing idea.
Thanks so much guys. It's been awesome. It's been a pleasure. That's it. Thanks for having us.
(01:00:40):
That's time done. Wow. Okay. Thanks guys. Really appreciate it. Huzzah!
Thank you for listening. Please share with people you know.
Until next time, as the Green Brothers say, don't forget to be awesome.
Popular Podcasts
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!