October 13, 2024 • 40 mins
We are back! Sorry for the delay in releases lately... life gets in the way sometimes.
In this special episode, Hannah Redford introduces Plan Decoders. Plan Decoders is Hannah's new adventure, and they are here to help you understand your NDIS plan. Listen in to find out more!
To contact Plan Decoders, head to the website:
or you can email Hannah at:
or call Hannah on:
0482 173 822
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
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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, whose stories were told for
(00:05):
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. This episode of What in the NDIS Now is
(00:32):
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 it keeps all my participant information,
(00:56):
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. Thanks again to Astalti for
(01:20):
sponsoring today's episode. You're listening to What in the NDIS Now, a podcast where I,
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Hannah Redford, and my friend, Sam Rosenbaum, interview participants and providers about
all things NDIS. Hey, we're back. We are so excited to be back. We were off for a little bit
because our youngest is in hospital and we couldn't get to editing or really recording. So that has
(02:08):
sucked for us very much. But we have a new episode for you. It's very exciting because it's all about
me. So enjoy this episode all about me and hopefully we can return to our regular programming, but
please forgive us if we don't because it is purely because of our sick kiddo. Thanks. Hi Sam, how are
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you going? I'm really well, Hannah. How about yourself as always? Good. Good. Good. Good.
We've got a bit something a little bit different today. We do. We are talking with the wonderful
Hannah Redford from Planned Dakota. Yes, the rumors are true. I have left support coordination.
(02:56):
But you're not leaving the sector are you? No, no, I'm not. And also I just, I said to Ellie
just the other day that you can take the girl out of support coordination, but you can't take support
coordination out of the girl. True. Yeah. No, I will, I will vouch for that. So yeah, we've got a
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new concept called Planned Dakotas, but let me tell you where I grew up first. Yes, our first question.
And we'll do all the normal things that we normally do because that it'll be fun. So I was actually
born in Adelaide to a, my mother is a uniting church minister and my father was a Christian
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brother, which is an order of monks in the Catholic church. So we went to Catholic mass on a Saturday
and then the Protestant uniting church on a Sunday morning when I was growing up. Now I think this,
I wanted to say this because to me it's funny because a lot of people are like, how the hell did
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that work? Having Catholic and Protestant. And what I will say is that when me and my sisters,
I was number three of four girls. And when we got to an age where my parents would let us
choose whether which, which one we went to, we had to still continue going to a church,
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but we could choose which one. We all gravitated towards the uniting church because it's,
I don't know if you've been to many Catholic churches, but it's very up down, kneel down,
stand up. I had five years in an all Catholic boarding school, boys boarding school. So we had
(04:58):
mass quite regularly and then quite a lot of other services and the whole calendar or an array of
celebrations or whatever you want to call it. It's been a while since I actually dealt with
the cocktail shaker of the religious world. Yeah. Yeah. So as an adult, I'm very atheist.
(05:19):
Anyway, so born in Adelaide and then I grew up mostly in Melbourne. I did my last three years
of high school in Bendigo. I went to two primary schools and four different high schools. And then
I had my first child when I was 19. So that derailed me slightly from the plan I had in my
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head that was finish year 12, go to university. And then I got married at 23 when I got married
to Ellie. We lived then we moved to country Victoria where we lived until we moved to
Queensland. And we're very grateful that you're up here. Yeah. So how did you get into the disability
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sector? Well, I was surrounded by it when I was growing up. And at first from when I was very
little, I wanted to be a child psychologist. I figured that there couldn't be possibly be
enough child psychologists in the world because I wasn't getting one. And so that's that's what I
(06:40):
was going to be. Even when I was like six and seven. Oh, wow. Like that's I was that's what I
wanted to be. That's a quite an early age to be definite that you're wanting to get into. Yeah,
I remember when I was at that age, I think I well, my family was very heavily religious. And of
course, I don't know whether we call it a culticized myself or indoctrinated or beaten it into me.
(07:05):
Anyway, at six or seven, I was preaching to my teddy bears through a vacuum for the vacuum hose
in my backyard. So I'm not too sure what that says about my trajectory for career choices at the age,
but it definitely wasn't so sad as yours. Oh, gosh, my parents would have fallen over themselves if
they thought I was going to get into the, you know, family business as such. I still feel like I kind
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of did because I feel like in a way, you know, particularly what my my mom, my dad has always
worked in sort of charities or some sort of working with people, a lot of it, particularly
with asylum seekers, refugees. He was the head of the National Council of Churches Commission for
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Refugees and Asylum Seekers for a number of years when I was growing up. So politics was also very
heavily in my family. And I feel like this being in this sector is very political, and it's a pretty
big political choice. And you know, I mean, our entire lives, our entire lives are controlled by
(08:26):
politics. So when people tell me that they don't like politics or don't participate in it, I'm like,
well, that it just doesn't matter because your entire life is controlled by politics. So you may
as well start to understand it. Anyway, I've strayed way away from the question. And so my first child
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who was born, we knew it 20 weeks when I was 20 weeks pregnant with her, that something was wrong
with her brain. So then disability moved up in what I was concerned about. And so she has
intellectual disability and autism. And then I have now three children. And my youngest also has
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autism and ADHD. And the middle child has autism and ADHD, which yeah, I did that in a funny way.
But anyway, you'll get what I mean. So they are yeah, 19, 15, and 13. And so often people say to
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me, oh, you don't look like you have a 19 year old. And I'm just like, well, thank you very much.
I'll take that compliment. Yes. Yes. So that's, that's essentially, yeah, I just followed my
interest, I guess. And yeah, this is, this is where I got to. So I started out doing drug and alcohol
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assessments and mental health assessments. So back in the day, the Victorian government had come up
with a new way of doing these things. And anyway, we did the assessments for mental health and drug
and alcohol. And then the company I worked for would then know the vacancies of all of the public
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spaces for those things. And so after we'd done the assessment, we'd then send it off to sort of
the next chain along the line. So I loved that. And I did it for a number of years. And it was,
it was so wonderful. One of the really good things about it was that particularly while people were
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waiting for mental health supports, I could give them a call every week or every fortnight,
depending on what they wanted or once a month, you know, like I said, depending on what they want.
And I could sort of just have a chat with them and say like, Hey, you are still on our list. You
haven't dropped off into the netherworld. Is there anywhere else I can refer you in the meantime? Do
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you need something else? And I thought that was brilliant because so often we get put on these
wait lists for even specialists or psychiatrists or whoever. And you don't hear anything for like
six or eight months. And how the time you've got about the referral in the first place by the time
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you get to know anything. Yeah. So I loved that we got to call them and be sort of like, yeah,
you're still on the wait list. We're still monitoring you. And then I could upgrade them
along our sort of triage if something went worse. And so that was awesome too. So yeah, then when I
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moved to Queensland, I worked in a mental health project. And part of that at the time was supporting
participants to get early access to the NDIS because it was before the NDIS fully rolled out
in South Brisbane. So the NDIS rolled out over Queensland over a number of years and sort of
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Townsville went first and then Ipswich and then South Brisbane and then North Brisbane and then
the rest of Queensland and all of Queensland was then on board. So it was even before North Brisbane
was able to get on board. And that was great, but it was also horribly infuriating because
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of course, as we all know, that is still a huge chunk of the problem that a lot of people can't
afford to see a specialist and get these specialist reports. And so I often felt like I was hitting
my head against a brick wall and it was really heartbreaking. And then when I worked there,
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they said, hey, now that the NDIS has rolled out, would you come be a support coordinator?
And that was it. It was on. You're in. Yeah. Yeah. So that has led me to, that led me to start
Chulip and I did that in October of 2021. So that was really brilliant. And one of the things that
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I found and that, you know, most people understand is that over 60% of participants don't get support
coordination. And what Ellie and I would find is that people would call up and say, oh, I haven't
used my plan for six months for 12 months for two years, because I've been too afraid. And you'd
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try and talk to them over the phone and try and figure out if there was support coordination in
the plan, but often they didn't understand. They didn't know how to read the plan. It was too hard.
So a lot of support coordinators would know that you try and help people generally for free
and you try and help figure out what's happening. And when I fully burnt out from support coordination
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in June, we came up with this idea of plan decoders. So, so often a plan looks like it's written in
code. Yep. And so we are here to decode that and to help participants. So what we do is
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we go out in a two hour session and we sit with them face to face if they're in Southeast Queensland
and we talk them through every category of the plan. We talk to them about what the funding means,
how to spend it. We talk about budgeting out the plan. We have a budgeting form so that it lasts
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from the life of the plan. We talk about where to find providers and what are some of the red flags.
We talk about what is an OT and why do I need one? Because so often, you know, it's so confusing.
Also, we talk about things like what reports you need to gather for review time and how to
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put together a review and about all the different reviews that you can do so that people are
understanding exactly what they can do. There is a bit of a nightmare. And even if you are lucky
enough to be part of that 30, 40% with support coordination, your plan, you get your plan and
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anyone that's been on any NDIS grassroots Facebook page group, you'll see it almost every second day.
I've just got my plan. They say to speak to my LAC. My LAC goes tells me to go find a plan manager
for plan managed or go find a support coordinator and to look at a website that they have that has
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all the lists, which has now changed to be very limited in who you can look for on the website.
And that's about the end of it. So people sort of have to then go, I've just got a plan.
How do I find now? And then it crowdsource quite a lot of information and unfortunately,
not all that information is correct. Yeah, like what, what even is a support coordinator
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and what does the support coordinator do? And, you know, beyond that, one of the things that
we have found in doing this is that some support coordinators have called us because
support coordination, we all know support coordination funding is getting squeezed and
is less and less and less. And they said, Hey, can you do the capacity building side?
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Well, they put the supports in place. And that way the hope is that we can do that.
And that way the hope is that beyond this plan, when the participant no longer has support
coordination or is, you know, on their own, they'll actually be able to probably navigate
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it a bit more easily by themselves. Now, one of the advantages to what we do is that we've
developed a whole bunch of resources that are in plain English, not quite easy read, because
that's complicated. It does require a lot of dedication and understanding and resources
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to get easy English in place. But plain English that we leave. So whatever topic we've talked
about in the session, we leave them with that corresponding resource so that there's something
that they can go back to afterwards. So we can do these sessions face to face if you're in
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Southeast Queensland from Sunshine Coast down to Tweed out to Toowoomba, wherever we don't really
care. Then we also go out to the whole of Australia via telehealth. Now it's really, really easy to
book in with us. You can book straight on our website. There are different types of bookings
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that you can make, whether you want it face to face or telehealth. And we've even got one where
we're going out to an office. So some providers have felt that this is such a good idea that
they've just they've wanted us to sit at their office for a day. And then they've put it out to
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their participants to say, Hey, we've got the plan decoders coming. Would you like to book in for
your two hours and then we get, you know, participants one after the other. And I think
that's amazing because that adds value to that provider saying, look, we've got this service
coming in. Like, I think it's really good, especially with them approaching you because
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as we sort of see in the NDIS space, and especially as providers is the networking and that
continuous sort of, let's collaborate spiel that happens day in and day out. But you don't
necessarily see anything come to fruition from it. So it's really exciting to actually see some
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providers that are really going the collaborative approach and starting to get into it a little
bit more. Yeah, don't get me started on collaboration. I tend to it's it's like,
it's an equal waving a red flag to a bull or red cape. Because to me, when I see the word
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collaborate, I think it's bullshit. Because when I have talked to providers about exactly
what do they mean by collaborate, what is collaboration to you, Sam? And they say to me,
Oh, you give us participants and we'll give you participants. That's not true collaboration.
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That's that's cross referrals. That's collusion. Yes. So when I see collaborate, I see collusion.
And there's been a few times where, when as a support coordinator, when providers have called
me up, and I've questioned them about what they mean about collaborate. And when they've said,
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it's it's about switching participants, I've and when I've said, No, that's not the way I do it,
I present different options. I've had people hang up on me. Not surprised. They're really,
there's unfortunately quite a lot of providers that really think they're entitled, because
they're an NDIS provider to have access to people's information. And we hamper on about this. And we've
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had quite a few of our guests get really frustrated with this whole situation, too. Yeah. And I'm
really happy to know about your service to understand it. But if you try and tell me that
you want to collaborate with me, you better have a good idea of exactly what that means. And exactly
(22:08):
the proposal you're putting to me. Because and like now as as plan decoders, we have an excellent
way people can collaborate with me, I can use their office, they can advertise that that's,
you know, plan decoders are coming to them. It's a great way to collaborate for a day. But yeah,
(22:33):
I'm I'm very, very cautious when someone says we want to collaborate. And I'm like,
it's a bit it's one of those buzzwords now. It's like, let's just add it on to the corporate bingo
card. Yeah, or maybe the NDIS sector bingo card. But I feel like we also need to update that.
(22:53):
Oh, man. That bingo card would be enormous. We need t shirts for it. Oh, there's another idea.
Please don't say that. It's called Samuel Rosenbaum, copyright infringement by potential.
But um, you have spoken about a couple key things. And that's that you're not necessarily a you're
you're not doing support coordination anymore. But plan decoders also is not a plan manager,
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but you can it's your service definitely ties into those two services to help support and
improve because we know that and plan managers aren't support coordinators, they're not they
have historically gone above and beyond their scope of work within this space. And with the
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margins being so tight, there is the risks that the NDIS review and the changes within the sector
are posing as well means that things are really getting a bit of a shake up, but you're not
necessarily becoming competition or threatening anything in this. It's an add on service where
it's designed to complement and improve the capacity of participants. Exactly. And it works
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great with plan managers because plan managers don't get paid to explain the plan. And they're
yet like you said, they're only $100 a month. You know, there's there's not the money there to do it.
And they're not face to face. And even when we're telehealth, like on a video conference video call,
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type diddly, whatever you want to call it, you can still see my face. And what I love about,
in some ways, doing it via the computer is that, you know, the button of I can share my screen,
and I can show you your plan and I can exactly, you know, go, this is what this bit means. And
(24:57):
this is how we're doing it. And so I find that really useful as well. Plans are getting longer,
harder, and more convoluted to understand from a professional point, let alone a family and a
participant point. It's ridiculous. Yeah, exactly. And to that point, today is the second of September
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when we're recording this. And just on Wednesday last week, a participant that I'm trying to hand
over for support coordination, but I got their new plan. And it was a totally new format. And it
is so much harder to read, so much harder to read. The formatting is appalling.
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It might as well be a government white paper. And it made me so angry that, again, they've changed
the fucking plans, how they look. And then on Friday, we got a newsletter from the NDIA saying,
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Hey, we've, we've changed how we set out plans. And I'm to make it easier to read. And I'm like,
well, you failed. You fundamentally fucking failed. Because it's harder and it's worse and it sucks.
And I had to sit there with this, but it's 37 pages long, Sam, for starters. And it is
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mind melting looking at it as someone who understands plans. It makes me so angry that
just even just the formatting. It's ridiculous. When I first started out in support coordination
in NDIA space, I think the longest plan I might have seen would have been seven pages. And that
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was for a very complex participant that had ridiculous amount of funding and very high
complex needs over multiple sectors within mainstream and NDIS and health services.
But yeah, it was seven pages, not 37 pages. Yeah. And now this participant has very complex
mental health and did not get a lot of funding. So this isn't like, this is a complex participant,
(27:28):
but not a complex plan, if that makes sense. Yeah. When we talk about complex plans for anyone
sort of getting confused by the words now, a person's individual needs can be complex to
address, but the plan that the NDIS might provide might be very straightforward. So you'll have
quite a decent amount in, or theoretically have a good amount within your core bucket.
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And then you'll have a decent amount, or theoretically, hopefully if the plan's being
assessed right, have a decent amount within capacity building to use for psychology and
other mental health and capacity building services. So it's really just two buckets
with a couple of lines, maybe a bit of a statement. And then above all that really should be the
goals and breakdowns, not a 37 page essay. Complex plans should be where you've got core
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budgets with a significant amount of money with probably a fair few status reports, some very
specific intents and needs because that's what the participant needs to live their daily life.
Probably quite a lot of different services stated within the capacity building and more than likely
you're also going to have a lot of capital expenses as well within that. So those sort of things,
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probably you're looking at about a page to two pages and a half for just the budget explanation
and what you've got. Whereas in someone with that situation, that's going to be about just probably
over three quarters of a page for just the budget, which really all that needs to be in a plan. But
did they put it on a quarter of a page?
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Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. And it was just, it was just disastrous. And the other
thing that ticked me off was that there was stuff in there that was part of the new legislation
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that is just passed, but is not into law yet. And I thought, how dare they put this in before it is
even legally the law. It is really, really disgusting, but plan decoders is here to help
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you understand the, however complex the plan is written.
Right. So how, how does a participant engage with your service? How does it charge? What sort of
stuff do they need to have in their plan? And probably how do they look to work out if they've
got that? Okay. It's really super easy. There are line items that we suggest, but we're super
(30:16):
flexible. There's ones in core and in capacity building. Now, one of the things that we know
is that often, particularly children don't get core. So we use the parents and carers training
in capacity building under core. We typically use the, it's called capacity building, self-managed
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and plan managed training. So they're the two line items we, we most typically use. What I would say
is don't stress too much about trying to figure out if you've got funding for a session with us,
(31:07):
because we can figure that out and we will talk you through it, through that. The best thing to do
is jump on our website and book in a time that suits you in, in the way that suits you and send
us, email us your plan and we will let you know. It's really where we want to make it as easy as
(31:33):
possible so that there is as little stress on participants as possible. Now, Sam, we also have
something really cool for providers such as yourself called industry decoders. So there is a tab
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on our website called industry decoders where you can go to find out about training for providers.
So we can do tailor-made training for you and specifically the type of work that you do within
(32:15):
the NDIS. You're not only doing tailor-made specialist sort of training for providers where
they might engage you, you're also doing a couple of webinar series as well to help
providers understand some certain things. And I think you ran one really recently as well.
Do you want to give us a little bit of a rundown what that was about? Yeah. So at the moment,
(32:36):
we're running the same training a few times over so that more people can have a look at it. So
it's called what support coordinators look for in providers because that's the question most
providers want to know. Most providers are looking to aim at support coordinators. It's also all about
(33:00):
how to improve your service essentially. So we go through talking about the intake process,
the referral process, communicating with support coordinators, what your introduction email
should look like and what should it contain. When you email support coordinators and other providers,
(33:27):
we need to know exactly what it is you're doing. And you would be shocked at the number of really
terribly worded emails we get. And we get hundreds of these emails a day. And so you want to stand
(33:47):
out. You need to be able to stand out. And in order to stand out, that email has to be on top
of its game. And so we definitely spend quite a bit of time going through that. We also talk about
things like service agreements, because so often providers expect support coordinators to go out
(34:12):
and get their service agreement signed for them. All right, the care plan. All right, the care plan.
That is definitely another thing we talk about. What should be in the care plan that you should
write a fucking care plan. And why you should do it yourself. Yes. Watch your responsibility to do
(34:33):
it, not somebody else's responsibility to do it. Including risks. So it's yeah, it's all of those
sorts of things. And what I do is we keep the numbers small so that you can ask questions
constantly throughout. And at the end, you get a copy of all the slides. Awesome. So there is
(34:57):
sessions coming up. So to sign up for the industry decoder webinar, all you have to do is send me an
email at hello at plandecoders.com.au. And it will also be in the show notes. So don't stress. You
(35:17):
just have to tell me how many tickets you want. And if there's a different email, I need to send
the invoice to and then I send you an invoice and you pay it. And then I send you the link to the
webinar. It's super simple. And it does, it did trip people up last time we did it because
(35:44):
we're doing it very, it's, it's in a low tech way. People expect that they can go on our website or
you know, click and buy it that way. And I'm sorry, we're not doing it that way. We're,
we'll send you an invoice, send us an email and we'll send you an invoice.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. But before we wrap up, we usually ask in your ideal world,
(36:09):
what would the NDIS look like? Now we run a podcast asking this question and talking about
this. So I'm going to change the question and throw you on the spot a little bit.
Pressure's on. What would the next three in your ideal world, what would the next three months
in the NDIS sector look like? Oh, in the next three months. Fuck. Well,
(36:35):
yeah, put me on the spot. I wonder if different questions. So we've talked a lot about things
that we'd like to see. I would like to see better communication from the government and the NDIA
because I think they have been super slack on that. So slack. And it's time they communicate
(37:06):
better. They need to tell us exactly what is going on. They need to give longer time frames
than 14 days for consultations, which was one of the issues that we had just recently. I think
also a part of me is like, we've done all the consultations. We did the disability royal
(37:33):
commission. We did the internal review. It's time to just do it now. Like, I don't understand
I don't understand this constant going, well, we're going to co-design it. We're going to do
this. We're going to do it. But we already discussed the co-design. We've done that.
(37:56):
I don't, it's so infuriating. And the constant sort of thought bubbles of bullshit that seemed
to come out of Bill Shorten's mouth of, oh, we're definitely going to do this. And then two minutes
later, oh, no, well, we're, we might change it up a little. It depends. And it's like,
(38:26):
so don't just run your mouth. Shut up until you've got an actual thing to tell us.
And maybe the, maybe your response to the NDIS review would be nice. I mean, the, the,
the NDIS review came from him. So I think the response is that they're accepting all of that.
(38:49):
I think more is that they should actually look into the disability royal commission a bit more
carefully and look at all of the ideas and things that came out of that, because now they're asked,
they're calling for suggestions around fund, foundational supports. And it's again, a very small
(39:17):
consultation window. So get onto it. But they're also faffing about saying, defining what do they
mean by fund foundational supports. So fuck. Well, thank you for that. I'm glad that my
(39:39):
are changing that up, put you on the spot a little bit, but this has been awesome little chat.
And I think the service is very much needed. It's something that I think is very been under,
well, not underutilized, but undertaken up from providers in the area of how to sort of tap into
this real key need of understanding a plan. As we sort of said, how we get, how you can get contact
(40:03):
with plan decoders and look at also the industry codes will be in our show notes. And as always,
thanks for listening. Thanks. Bye. 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, whose stories were told for
(00:05):
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
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(00:32):
brought to you by Astalti. Astalti is the software solution for NDIS professionals built by NDIS
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(00:56):
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. Thanks again to Astalti for
(01:20):
sponsoring today's episode. You're listening to What in the NDIS Now, a podcast where I,
(01:41):
Hannah Redford, and my friend, Sam Rosenbaum, interview participants and providers about
all things NDIS. Hey, we're back. We are so excited to be back. We were off for a little bit
because our youngest is in hospital and we couldn't get to editing or really recording. So that has
(02:08):
sucked for us very much. But we have a new episode for you. It's very exciting because it's all about
me. So enjoy this episode all about me and hopefully we can return to our regular programming, but
please forgive us if we don't because it is purely because of our sick kiddo. Thanks. Hi Sam, how are
(02:35):
you going? I'm really well, Hannah. How about yourself as always? Good. Good. Good. Good.
We've got a bit something a little bit different today. We do. We are talking with the wonderful
Hannah Redford from Planned Dakota. Yes, the rumors are true. I have left support coordination.
(02:56):
But you're not leaving the sector are you? No, no, I'm not. And also I just, I said to Ellie
just the other day that you can take the girl out of support coordination, but you can't take support
coordination out of the girl. True. Yeah. No, I will, I will vouch for that. So yeah, we've got a
(03:21):
new concept called Planned Dakotas, but let me tell you where I grew up first. Yes, our first question.
And we'll do all the normal things that we normally do because that it'll be fun. So I was actually
born in Adelaide to a, my mother is a uniting church minister and my father was a Christian
(03:47):
brother, which is an order of monks in the Catholic church. So we went to Catholic mass on a Saturday
and then the Protestant uniting church on a Sunday morning when I was growing up. Now I think this,
I wanted to say this because to me it's funny because a lot of people are like, how the hell did
(04:11):
that work? Having Catholic and Protestant. And what I will say is that when me and my sisters,
I was number three of four girls. And when we got to an age where my parents would let us
choose whether which, which one we went to, we had to still continue going to a church,
(04:35):
but we could choose which one. We all gravitated towards the uniting church because it's,
I don't know if you've been to many Catholic churches, but it's very up down, kneel down,
stand up. I had five years in an all Catholic boarding school, boys boarding school. So we had
(04:58):
mass quite regularly and then quite a lot of other services and the whole calendar or an array of
celebrations or whatever you want to call it. It's been a while since I actually dealt with
the cocktail shaker of the religious world. Yeah. Yeah. So as an adult, I'm very atheist.
(05:19):
Anyway, so born in Adelaide and then I grew up mostly in Melbourne. I did my last three years
of high school in Bendigo. I went to two primary schools and four different high schools. And then
I had my first child when I was 19. So that derailed me slightly from the plan I had in my
(05:47):
head that was finish year 12, go to university. And then I got married at 23 when I got married
to Ellie. We lived then we moved to country Victoria where we lived until we moved to
Queensland. And we're very grateful that you're up here. Yeah. So how did you get into the disability
(06:12):
sector? Well, I was surrounded by it when I was growing up. And at first from when I was very
little, I wanted to be a child psychologist. I figured that there couldn't be possibly be
enough child psychologists in the world because I wasn't getting one. And so that's that's what I
(06:40):
was going to be. Even when I was like six and seven. Oh, wow. Like that's I was that's what I
wanted to be. That's a quite an early age to be definite that you're wanting to get into. Yeah,
I remember when I was at that age, I think I well, my family was very heavily religious. And of
course, I don't know whether we call it a culticized myself or indoctrinated or beaten it into me.
(07:05):
Anyway, at six or seven, I was preaching to my teddy bears through a vacuum for the vacuum hose
in my backyard. So I'm not too sure what that says about my trajectory for career choices at the age,
but it definitely wasn't so sad as yours. Oh, gosh, my parents would have fallen over themselves if
they thought I was going to get into the, you know, family business as such. I still feel like I kind
(07:31):
of did because I feel like in a way, you know, particularly what my my mom, my dad has always
worked in sort of charities or some sort of working with people, a lot of it, particularly
with asylum seekers, refugees. He was the head of the National Council of Churches Commission for
(07:58):
Refugees and Asylum Seekers for a number of years when I was growing up. So politics was also very
heavily in my family. And I feel like this being in this sector is very political, and it's a pretty
big political choice. And you know, I mean, our entire lives, our entire lives are controlled by
(08:26):
politics. So when people tell me that they don't like politics or don't participate in it, I'm like,
well, that it just doesn't matter because your entire life is controlled by politics. So you may
as well start to understand it. Anyway, I've strayed way away from the question. And so my first child
(08:51):
who was born, we knew it 20 weeks when I was 20 weeks pregnant with her, that something was wrong
with her brain. So then disability moved up in what I was concerned about. And so she has
intellectual disability and autism. And then I have now three children. And my youngest also has
(09:17):
autism and ADHD. And the middle child has autism and ADHD, which yeah, I did that in a funny way.
But anyway, you'll get what I mean. So they are yeah, 19, 15, and 13. And so often people say to
(09:38):
me, oh, you don't look like you have a 19 year old. And I'm just like, well, thank you very much.
I'll take that compliment. Yes. Yes. So that's, that's essentially, yeah, I just followed my
interest, I guess. And yeah, this is, this is where I got to. So I started out doing drug and alcohol
(10:02):
assessments and mental health assessments. So back in the day, the Victorian government had come up
with a new way of doing these things. And anyway, we did the assessments for mental health and drug
and alcohol. And then the company I worked for would then know the vacancies of all of the public
(10:25):
spaces for those things. And so after we'd done the assessment, we'd then send it off to sort of
the next chain along the line. So I loved that. And I did it for a number of years. And it was,
it was so wonderful. One of the really good things about it was that particularly while people were
(10:50):
waiting for mental health supports, I could give them a call every week or every fortnight,
depending on what they wanted or once a month, you know, like I said, depending on what they want.
And I could sort of just have a chat with them and say like, Hey, you are still on our list. You
haven't dropped off into the netherworld. Is there anywhere else I can refer you in the meantime? Do
(11:15):
you need something else? And I thought that was brilliant because so often we get put on these
wait lists for even specialists or psychiatrists or whoever. And you don't hear anything for like
six or eight months. And how the time you've got about the referral in the first place by the time
(11:36):
you get to know anything. Yeah. So I loved that we got to call them and be sort of like, yeah,
you're still on the wait list. We're still monitoring you. And then I could upgrade them
along our sort of triage if something went worse. And so that was awesome too. So yeah, then when I
(12:00):
moved to Queensland, I worked in a mental health project. And part of that at the time was supporting
participants to get early access to the NDIS because it was before the NDIS fully rolled out
in South Brisbane. So the NDIS rolled out over Queensland over a number of years and sort of
(12:27):
Townsville went first and then Ipswich and then South Brisbane and then North Brisbane and then
the rest of Queensland and all of Queensland was then on board. So it was even before North Brisbane
was able to get on board. And that was great, but it was also horribly infuriating because
(12:49):
of course, as we all know, that is still a huge chunk of the problem that a lot of people can't
afford to see a specialist and get these specialist reports. And so I often felt like I was hitting
my head against a brick wall and it was really heartbreaking. And then when I worked there,
(13:11):
they said, hey, now that the NDIS has rolled out, would you come be a support coordinator?
And that was it. It was on. You're in. Yeah. Yeah. So that has led me to, that led me to start
Chulip and I did that in October of 2021. So that was really brilliant. And one of the things that
(13:38):
I found and that, you know, most people understand is that over 60% of participants don't get support
coordination. And what Ellie and I would find is that people would call up and say, oh, I haven't
used my plan for six months for 12 months for two years, because I've been too afraid. And you'd
(14:05):
try and talk to them over the phone and try and figure out if there was support coordination in
the plan, but often they didn't understand. They didn't know how to read the plan. It was too hard.
So a lot of support coordinators would know that you try and help people generally for free
and you try and help figure out what's happening. And when I fully burnt out from support coordination
(14:30):
in June, we came up with this idea of plan decoders. So, so often a plan looks like it's written in
code. Yep. And so we are here to decode that and to help participants. So what we do is
(14:51):
we go out in a two hour session and we sit with them face to face if they're in Southeast Queensland
and we talk them through every category of the plan. We talk to them about what the funding means,
how to spend it. We talk about budgeting out the plan. We have a budgeting form so that it lasts
(15:18):
from the life of the plan. We talk about where to find providers and what are some of the red flags.
We talk about what is an OT and why do I need one? Because so often, you know, it's so confusing.
Also, we talk about things like what reports you need to gather for review time and how to
(15:42):
put together a review and about all the different reviews that you can do so that people are
understanding exactly what they can do. There is a bit of a nightmare. And even if you are lucky
enough to be part of that 30, 40% with support coordination, your plan, you get your plan and
(16:05):
anyone that's been on any NDIS grassroots Facebook page group, you'll see it almost every second day.
I've just got my plan. They say to speak to my LAC. My LAC goes tells me to go find a plan manager
for plan managed or go find a support coordinator and to look at a website that they have that has
(16:25):
all the lists, which has now changed to be very limited in who you can look for on the website.
And that's about the end of it. So people sort of have to then go, I've just got a plan.
How do I find now? And then it crowdsource quite a lot of information and unfortunately,
not all that information is correct. Yeah, like what, what even is a support coordinator
(16:50):
and what does the support coordinator do? And, you know, beyond that, one of the things that
we have found in doing this is that some support coordinators have called us because
support coordination, we all know support coordination funding is getting squeezed and
is less and less and less. And they said, Hey, can you do the capacity building side?
(17:17):
Well, they put the supports in place. And that way the hope is that we can do that.
And that way the hope is that beyond this plan, when the participant no longer has support
coordination or is, you know, on their own, they'll actually be able to probably navigate
(17:40):
it a bit more easily by themselves. Now, one of the advantages to what we do is that we've
developed a whole bunch of resources that are in plain English, not quite easy read, because
that's complicated. It does require a lot of dedication and understanding and resources
(18:05):
to get easy English in place. But plain English that we leave. So whatever topic we've talked
about in the session, we leave them with that corresponding resource so that there's something
that they can go back to afterwards. So we can do these sessions face to face if you're in
(18:28):
Southeast Queensland from Sunshine Coast down to Tweed out to Toowoomba, wherever we don't really
care. Then we also go out to the whole of Australia via telehealth. Now it's really, really easy to
book in with us. You can book straight on our website. There are different types of bookings
(18:54):
that you can make, whether you want it face to face or telehealth. And we've even got one where
we're going out to an office. So some providers have felt that this is such a good idea that
they've just they've wanted us to sit at their office for a day. And then they've put it out to
(19:19):
their participants to say, Hey, we've got the plan decoders coming. Would you like to book in for
your two hours and then we get, you know, participants one after the other. And I think
that's amazing because that adds value to that provider saying, look, we've got this service
coming in. Like, I think it's really good, especially with them approaching you because
(19:42):
as we sort of see in the NDIS space, and especially as providers is the networking and that
continuous sort of, let's collaborate spiel that happens day in and day out. But you don't
necessarily see anything come to fruition from it. So it's really exciting to actually see some
(20:06):
providers that are really going the collaborative approach and starting to get into it a little
bit more. Yeah, don't get me started on collaboration. I tend to it's it's like,
it's an equal waving a red flag to a bull or red cape. Because to me, when I see the word
(20:29):
collaborate, I think it's bullshit. Because when I have talked to providers about exactly
what do they mean by collaborate, what is collaboration to you, Sam? And they say to me,
Oh, you give us participants and we'll give you participants. That's not true collaboration.
(20:54):
That's that's cross referrals. That's collusion. Yes. So when I see collaborate, I see collusion.
And there's been a few times where, when as a support coordinator, when providers have called
me up, and I've questioned them about what they mean about collaborate. And when they've said,
(21:15):
it's it's about switching participants, I've and when I've said, No, that's not the way I do it,
I present different options. I've had people hang up on me. Not surprised. They're really,
there's unfortunately quite a lot of providers that really think they're entitled, because
they're an NDIS provider to have access to people's information. And we hamper on about this. And we've
(21:41):
had quite a few of our guests get really frustrated with this whole situation, too. Yeah. And I'm
really happy to know about your service to understand it. But if you try and tell me that
you want to collaborate with me, you better have a good idea of exactly what that means. And exactly
(22:08):
the proposal you're putting to me. Because and like now as as plan decoders, we have an excellent
way people can collaborate with me, I can use their office, they can advertise that that's,
you know, plan decoders are coming to them. It's a great way to collaborate for a day. But yeah,
(22:33):
I'm I'm very, very cautious when someone says we want to collaborate. And I'm like,
it's a bit it's one of those buzzwords now. It's like, let's just add it on to the corporate bingo
card. Yeah, or maybe the NDIS sector bingo card. But I feel like we also need to update that.
(22:53):
Oh, man. That bingo card would be enormous. We need t shirts for it. Oh, there's another idea.
Please don't say that. It's called Samuel Rosenbaum, copyright infringement by potential.
But um, you have spoken about a couple key things. And that's that you're not necessarily a you're
you're not doing support coordination anymore. But plan decoders also is not a plan manager,
(23:19):
but you can it's your service definitely ties into those two services to help support and
improve because we know that and plan managers aren't support coordinators, they're not they
have historically gone above and beyond their scope of work within this space. And with the
(23:40):
margins being so tight, there is the risks that the NDIS review and the changes within the sector
are posing as well means that things are really getting a bit of a shake up, but you're not
necessarily becoming competition or threatening anything in this. It's an add on service where
it's designed to complement and improve the capacity of participants. Exactly. And it works
(24:06):
great with plan managers because plan managers don't get paid to explain the plan. And they're
yet like you said, they're only $100 a month. You know, there's there's not the money there to do it.
And they're not face to face. And even when we're telehealth, like on a video conference video call,
(24:32):
type diddly, whatever you want to call it, you can still see my face. And what I love about,
in some ways, doing it via the computer is that, you know, the button of I can share my screen,
and I can show you your plan and I can exactly, you know, go, this is what this bit means. And
(24:57):
this is how we're doing it. And so I find that really useful as well. Plans are getting longer,
harder, and more convoluted to understand from a professional point, let alone a family and a
participant point. It's ridiculous. Yeah, exactly. And to that point, today is the second of September
(25:22):
when we're recording this. And just on Wednesday last week, a participant that I'm trying to hand
over for support coordination, but I got their new plan. And it was a totally new format. And it
is so much harder to read, so much harder to read. The formatting is appalling.
(25:49):
It might as well be a government white paper. And it made me so angry that, again, they've changed
the fucking plans, how they look. And then on Friday, we got a newsletter from the NDIA saying,
(26:10):
Hey, we've, we've changed how we set out plans. And I'm to make it easier to read. And I'm like,
well, you failed. You fundamentally fucking failed. Because it's harder and it's worse and it sucks.
And I had to sit there with this, but it's 37 pages long, Sam, for starters. And it is
(26:38):
mind melting looking at it as someone who understands plans. It makes me so angry that
just even just the formatting. It's ridiculous. When I first started out in support coordination
in NDIA space, I think the longest plan I might have seen would have been seven pages. And that
(27:00):
was for a very complex participant that had ridiculous amount of funding and very high
complex needs over multiple sectors within mainstream and NDIS and health services.
But yeah, it was seven pages, not 37 pages. Yeah. And now this participant has very complex
mental health and did not get a lot of funding. So this isn't like, this is a complex participant,
(27:28):
but not a complex plan, if that makes sense. Yeah. When we talk about complex plans for anyone
sort of getting confused by the words now, a person's individual needs can be complex to
address, but the plan that the NDIS might provide might be very straightforward. So you'll have
quite a decent amount in, or theoretically have a good amount within your core bucket.
(27:54):
And then you'll have a decent amount, or theoretically, hopefully if the plan's being
assessed right, have a decent amount within capacity building to use for psychology and
other mental health and capacity building services. So it's really just two buckets
with a couple of lines, maybe a bit of a statement. And then above all that really should be the
goals and breakdowns, not a 37 page essay. Complex plans should be where you've got core
(28:20):
budgets with a significant amount of money with probably a fair few status reports, some very
specific intents and needs because that's what the participant needs to live their daily life.
Probably quite a lot of different services stated within the capacity building and more than likely
you're also going to have a lot of capital expenses as well within that. So those sort of things,
(28:41):
probably you're looking at about a page to two pages and a half for just the budget explanation
and what you've got. Whereas in someone with that situation, that's going to be about just probably
over three quarters of a page for just the budget, which really all that needs to be in a plan. But
did they put it on a quarter of a page?
(29:02):
Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. And it was just, it was just disastrous. And the other
thing that ticked me off was that there was stuff in there that was part of the new legislation
(29:25):
that is just passed, but is not into law yet. And I thought, how dare they put this in before it is
even legally the law. It is really, really disgusting, but plan decoders is here to help
(29:51):
you understand the, however complex the plan is written.
Right. So how, how does a participant engage with your service? How does it charge? What sort of
stuff do they need to have in their plan? And probably how do they look to work out if they've
got that? Okay. It's really super easy. There are line items that we suggest, but we're super
(30:16):
flexible. There's ones in core and in capacity building. Now, one of the things that we know
is that often, particularly children don't get core. So we use the parents and carers training
in capacity building under core. We typically use the, it's called capacity building, self-managed
(30:46):
and plan managed training. So they're the two line items we, we most typically use. What I would say
is don't stress too much about trying to figure out if you've got funding for a session with us,
(31:07):
because we can figure that out and we will talk you through it, through that. The best thing to do
is jump on our website and book in a time that suits you in, in the way that suits you and send
us, email us your plan and we will let you know. It's really where we want to make it as easy as
(31:33):
possible so that there is as little stress on participants as possible. Now, Sam, we also have
something really cool for providers such as yourself called industry decoders. So there is a tab
(31:54):
on our website called industry decoders where you can go to find out about training for providers.
So we can do tailor-made training for you and specifically the type of work that you do within
(32:15):
the NDIS. You're not only doing tailor-made specialist sort of training for providers where
they might engage you, you're also doing a couple of webinar series as well to help
providers understand some certain things. And I think you ran one really recently as well.
Do you want to give us a little bit of a rundown what that was about? Yeah. So at the moment,
(32:36):
we're running the same training a few times over so that more people can have a look at it. So
it's called what support coordinators look for in providers because that's the question most
providers want to know. Most providers are looking to aim at support coordinators. It's also all about
(33:00):
how to improve your service essentially. So we go through talking about the intake process,
the referral process, communicating with support coordinators, what your introduction email
should look like and what should it contain. When you email support coordinators and other providers,
(33:27):
we need to know exactly what it is you're doing. And you would be shocked at the number of really
terribly worded emails we get. And we get hundreds of these emails a day. And so you want to stand
(33:47):
out. You need to be able to stand out. And in order to stand out, that email has to be on top
of its game. And so we definitely spend quite a bit of time going through that. We also talk about
things like service agreements, because so often providers expect support coordinators to go out
(34:12):
and get their service agreement signed for them. All right, the care plan. All right, the care plan.
That is definitely another thing we talk about. What should be in the care plan that you should
write a fucking care plan. And why you should do it yourself. Yes. Watch your responsibility to do
(34:33):
it, not somebody else's responsibility to do it. Including risks. So it's yeah, it's all of those
sorts of things. And what I do is we keep the numbers small so that you can ask questions
constantly throughout. And at the end, you get a copy of all the slides. Awesome. So there is
(34:57):
sessions coming up. So to sign up for the industry decoder webinar, all you have to do is send me an
email at hello at plandecoders.com.au. And it will also be in the show notes. So don't stress. You
(35:17):
just have to tell me how many tickets you want. And if there's a different email, I need to send
the invoice to and then I send you an invoice and you pay it. And then I send you the link to the
webinar. It's super simple. And it does, it did trip people up last time we did it because
(35:44):
we're doing it very, it's, it's in a low tech way. People expect that they can go on our website or
you know, click and buy it that way. And I'm sorry, we're not doing it that way. We're,
we'll send you an invoice, send us an email and we'll send you an invoice.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. But before we wrap up, we usually ask in your ideal world,
(36:09):
what would the NDIS look like? Now we run a podcast asking this question and talking about
this. So I'm going to change the question and throw you on the spot a little bit.
Pressure's on. What would the next three in your ideal world, what would the next three months
in the NDIS sector look like? Oh, in the next three months. Fuck. Well,
(36:35):
yeah, put me on the spot. I wonder if different questions. So we've talked a lot about things
that we'd like to see. I would like to see better communication from the government and the NDIA
because I think they have been super slack on that. So slack. And it's time they communicate
(37:06):
better. They need to tell us exactly what is going on. They need to give longer time frames
than 14 days for consultations, which was one of the issues that we had just recently. I think
also a part of me is like, we've done all the consultations. We did the disability royal
(37:33):
commission. We did the internal review. It's time to just do it now. Like, I don't understand
I don't understand this constant going, well, we're going to co-design it. We're going to do
this. We're going to do it. But we already discussed the co-design. We've done that.
(37:56):
I don't, it's so infuriating. And the constant sort of thought bubbles of bullshit that seemed
to come out of Bill Shorten's mouth of, oh, we're definitely going to do this. And then two minutes
later, oh, no, well, we're, we might change it up a little. It depends. And it's like,
(38:26):
so don't just run your mouth. Shut up until you've got an actual thing to tell us.
And maybe the, maybe your response to the NDIS review would be nice. I mean, the, the,
the NDIS review came from him. So I think the response is that they're accepting all of that.
(38:49):
I think more is that they should actually look into the disability royal commission a bit more
carefully and look at all of the ideas and things that came out of that, because now they're asked,
they're calling for suggestions around fund, foundational supports. And it's again, a very small
(39:17):
consultation window. So get onto it. But they're also faffing about saying, defining what do they
mean by fund foundational supports. So fuck. Well, thank you for that. I'm glad that my
(39:39):
are changing that up, put you on the spot a little bit, but this has been awesome little chat.
And I think the service is very much needed. It's something that I think is very been under,
well, not underutilized, but undertaken up from providers in the area of how to sort of tap into
this real key need of understanding a plan. As we sort of said, how we get, how you can get contact
(40:03):
with plan decoders and look at also the industry codes will be in our show notes. And as always,
thanks for listening. Thanks. Bye. Thank you for listening. Please share with people you know,
until next time, as the Green Brothers say, don't forget to be awesome.
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