Transcript – Webinar: Supported Residential Services
10 December 2024
Clare Moran (SSR) 0:10
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our webinar for Supported Residential Services.
My name is Clare Moran. I'm the Manager for Guidance and Preparedness at the Social Services Regulator, and I will be your facilitator for today.
We might just see if we can bring up the slide pack and then we can make a formal start.
Just confirming that everyone can hear me okay while we're waiting?
Great, thank you. I can see at least one thumbs up. Thank you very much.
Alright. And we might go to the next slide please.
I've just a few items before we officially start the session.
The session will be recorded, and we will e-mail the slide pack to you following the session.
We will also make the recording available on our website, but please be patient as it does take a little while for us to upload it to the website following the session.
For today's agenda, you will hear an introduction from Jonathan Kaplan, the Social Services Regulator, about why there's a new Social Services Regulator and what its role is.
You'll hear from Richard Marks about what's changed for you since 1 July. What are your reporting requirements and also what guidance and information there is to help you comply?
And we'll also give you some links about where you can get more information.
Before we begin, we'd appreciate you filling in a poll for us that will be popping up on your screens shortly.
There will also be a poll at the end of your session.
These polls help us evaluate and improve these sessions.
So, we do really appreciate you filling it in for us.
And next slide please.
So here are some tips to help you get the most out of today's webinars.
We encourage you to have your camera on.
Your microphone will be muted to avoid accidental interruptions.
There is a chat enabled for this meeting where you can add questions, and we'll also share some links for you in the chat.
We will share a copy of the slides after the meeting, as I mentioned.
If you are having trouble viewing the presenter or the slides, use the view button in the top right-hand corner of your screen and that should help you adjust some of your settings.
The slides have live links that you can click on in real time during the webinar and we will set aside time at the end for questions.
You can submit your questions in the chat as we mentioned, and we'll try to answer as many of those as we can.
Please keep your questions relevant to the topic for today.
I'll now welcome to the screen, Jonathan Kaplan, the Social Services Regulator.
Jonathan Kaplan (SSR) 3:56
Thank you, Clare, and thank you everybody for joining us today.
What I'd like to do to open this session more formally is to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we are meeting today.
I'm on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and I would like to pay my respect to Aboriginal elders, past, present and emerging, and any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us today.
So, what I'd like to do is just to introduce myself.
Give you a little bit of context around who we are, as in the Social Services Regulator, what our focus is, who's covered by the new scheme and new laws. And just to highlight our priorities before handing over to Richard Marks, who'll be able to take us through a range of requirements in a bit more detail.
And really, what I'm hoping that we are able to do today is provide you with some greater information, an understanding of the scheme that over time will assist you in being able to clearly and easily understand what your compliance obligations are and how to meet them.
Information, education and guidance is the most useful and important regulatory tool we have, and having webinars and the ability to interact with you really supports that.
Thank you.
So, the Social Services Regulator became an entity on the 1st of July, this year.
And we are enabled through the Social Services Regulation Act and the supporting regulations.
And really what the Act does is, it introduces a new single independent regulator who regulates across a range of social services providers, including yourselves, relative to a new set of Social Services Standards.
So what it does is both the Act, and the standards, and the Social Services Regulator replaces the Human Services Regulator, who many of you would have engaged with previously and also is the new and modern legislation that we have to be able to provide assurance to the community that social services providers who are registered and providing in Victoria are meeting a series of minimum standards.
So how do we go about doing that?
So, for us really it's about a series of focus areas.
And, sorry if we could go to the next slide please. Thank you.
As I said, one of the most important regulatory tools that we have is education and engagement across the sector, because part of our role is being able to support you, to understand what you need to do to meet the standards that government has set as to what are the important elements of a safe social service from a user perspective.
We do that through education and engagement.
We do that also through a registration process and that's both registering new providers, but also through updating and maintaining any changes to registrations that may occur over the life cycle of an organisation, and Rich will talk about this shortly.
We regulate, as I said, to those Social Services Standards and we also regulate to the Victorian Child Safe Standards, so anybody who has children in their services also has to meet the Child Safe Standards.
In social services, the standards are new but pick up and incorporate many of the elements that were previously there in the SRS Act and standards that you work to, but the Child Safe Standards have been set and have been unchanged for a number of years.
There's been eleven of them for the last three years and prior to that for about 8 years before there were seven.
So, for those of you who work with children, they should be familiar.
How we go about our work is we really focus on monitoring and that's monitoring a range of incident reports and other notifications.
And we do that so that we can act to ensure the safety of social service users and in the new piece of legislation that we work to, it's very importantly clear at the top of it that our purpose is around preventing harm to social services users, many of whom may be vulnerable Victorians.
And we use the legislation to respond to breaches of the standards and the Act.
The other thing to highlight is we work very closely with a range of other key organisations, and some of whom are co-regulators and other key stakeholders.
So, an example of who that might be would be community visitors and also state trustees.
The important element of the independent nature of the Regulator is that we make our decisions independent of government. So that's independent of the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing.
And we treat every provider, whether it is a not-for-profit, a for-profit or where government delivers services itself within these sectors consistently.
And due to the independence, we are not directed relative to our regulatory activity by the Minister in individual matters.
So, we do work closely with the Commission for Children and Young People, the Victorian Disability Worker Commission and also the NDIS, NDIS Safeguarding and Quality Commission.
Thank you.
One of the important things I think just to highlight at the beginning, which is what our role is relative to the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing.
And so here in this slide, we're really just trying to draw out that distinction between us as a regulator who engages relative to those standards, either Social Services or Child Safe Standards, as opposed to DFFH, who is responsible for SRS sector support.
And so they will do that through sector capability building, through the community of practice that they run, through SAVVI funding and PLP funding and also supporting the assessment of residents needs when notified by us and they have the overarching policy and system stewardship role that the Regulator doesn't have.
So, I think it's just important to understand that they will still be present in the sector, even though we are now the Regulator, but it is important that you have relationships with both of them.
Thank you.
As I said earlier, there are a range of social service providers that will fall under the scope of the SSR.
It's a progressive enrolment of these organisations over the next 12 months.
And so, you can see here what that broad range of providers will look like by the time we get to this time next year.
And you can see yourselves there alongside disability service providers, and that's disability services that are funded by Victoria, so that might be people funded by TAC or WorkSafe or WorkCover, as well as a range of other social services.
We're still in the early stages of our work, both establishing the organisation, but also going through the process of registering and then once on board, regulating across the breadth, but all to the consistent set of standards that government has set relative to providers under the broader social services banner.
So our priorities and as I mentioned very clear purpose in the Act is really around protecting service users from harm, abuse and neglect.
And we really look to do that, and this is where the instant reporting that Rich will talk about shortly is very important, which is understanding where risk is and where possible being able to take action to minimise any further avoidable harm.
To promote the safe delivery, sorry to promote and support the delivery of safe and effective social services and the standards that we regulate too, are the proxies that government has set to do that.
And within that, we really encourage continuous improvement.
Having said that, we do regulate to minimum standards, which means that providers are only required to meet the standards. However, we are always pleased to see providers who go over and above what is the minimum.
And over time, really making sure that we as a single sole regulator can ensure that there is a closing of the gaps between different elements of the social services sector in order to come back and make sure that those service uses are protected from harm, abuse and neglect.
So that was really just the setting of the scene I wanted to do.
The legislation and everything and the standards are all passed and set and now really we're in the stage of working with you to make sure that you understand your obligations and you understand how we work so that collectively we can ensure that the people who access these services all access safe and secure services that meet their needs.
So, thank you for joining me today and I will now hand over to Richard Marks, who will take us through with a bit more detail.
Richard Marks (SSR) 14:19
Thanks, Jonathan.
Hi everybody.
So, for anyone who hasn't met me before, my name is Richard Marks. I am the Director of Social Services Regulation within the SSR.
We'll take you through some of the elements of the new scheme and some of the common questions that we've had through the new scheme.
We won't be able to cover everything.
We do want to make some time for questions at the end just to make sure that we're understanding what your information needs are. So, we'll save a time bit of time at the other end.
Don't feel like you need to write everything down.
We will send out these slides after the session and we'll also have this this session up as a webinar on our website so you can go back and re watch things. So don't feel like you have to scribble everything down.
So, and most of what I'm going to talk about is information that's on our website and you'll see that there are links as, as Clare said, there are links in the in the presentation itself that'll take you to some of those sections of our website where that guidance is.
So, good news, all of you who are current SRS proprietors were automatically registered on the 1st of July with the Social Services Regulator. There were transitional provisions that brought your registrations across and you should all have received a welcome e-mail that talked to that and rolled over some of the conditions.
The registration under this scheme is perpetual as it was for you, as in the previous scheme. So, you don't need to apply to renew your registration.
Obviously, like any legislative scheme, you do have to meet the requirements to comply with the new laws.
So, within the new framework, these new things, called Social Services Standards. They're not revolutionary. A lot of what is in there is what you already do, so they shouldn't be too surprising.
They are different though, and they do, the old SRS scheme was quite detailed and quite prescriptive. Some people really like that because it gives you real clarity on what you have to do.
Some people don't because it also limits flexibility.
This new scheme does lift things up a little bit. It gives more flexibility, but really conscious that within that is the need for guidance so that people understand what the expectations are.
Jonathan's talked about the Child Safe Standards. I only know of one provider who has people who are under 18. If you do have people under 18, you must comply with the Child Safe Standards as well though.
There will be, your registration will have conditions in it. So along with the other provisions of the legislation, you must comply with any conditions on your registration.
There are requirements around reporting, which I'll talk to more
And there are some specific SRS requirements as well.
So, there are the general provisions that apply to everyone which include the Social Services Standards and the registration requirements.
There are specific requirements for SRS’s in both the Act and then there is an SRS specific regulation as well.
What we've sought to do with our guidance and education is to take all of that information and synthesise it into one place.
So, you can just look at one place and say that's what I need to do for medication, for example.
And you can see that there's a link there to the registration page.
One other change that I'll talk about is under the old scheme it was the premises that was registered. In this new scheme, it is the provider who is registered, and the premises is a part of your registration.
So, there are a few of you that have multiple premises, multiple SRS’s where the proprietor company is the same. That will now sit under the proprietor under the provider with multiple sites underneath it.
And that has some implications in terms of change of ownership and that we'll talk about a little bit later as well.
So, the six Social Services Standards at a very high level:
- safe service delivery,
- service user agency and dignity,
- safe service environment,
- feedback and complaints,
- accountable organisational governance, and
- safe workforce.
There's nothing earth shattering in that, they are the core of what you guys do every day.
What these standards do is, as I said, lift it up a little bit.
The standards themselves are literally just a line like that. And then there are service requirements which are in the regulations.
What we've done is provided quite a bit of guidance on what these look like.
So, if I go to the next slide, you'll see that there are information sheets for each of the standards and those information sheets include checklists, outcomes, service requirements and indicators of success.
What we've also done is a comparison document. So that compares the new standards against the old accommodation and personal support standards.
So, you'd be very familiar with the former accommodation and personal support standards.
This document, helpfully titled Comparison with other standards, goes through the new standards and the old standards and helps identify where there are overlaps and where there might be new things that you might need to think about.
So, we've tried to make it as easy as possible for you to understand what's new.
And again, there's a link to the guidance there.
As well as the six information standards, there's also an overview document for the standards themselves. And then that comparison document.
So, what continues?
So, these are where some of those specific requirements for SRS’s come in.
So, some of these have been brought across from the old scheme. So, they're almost a lift and shift from the old scheme.
Medication. That's one of our highest risk issues when medication goes wrong, that can really lead to harm.
So; there are requirements around, you know, what you must do to administer medicine, store medication and keeping records.
Residents’ money, again, you've got people who are residing in your facilities who rely on you for you know, sometimes for managing their money.
So, there's really clear requirements around what is permissible there, what sort of transactions are permissible and record keeping for that work.
Residential and services agreements. That's the core of your kind of input and that's your agreement with the resident as to the services that you're providing for the fees that you're charging them.
So again, that's a critical piece of the puzzle and that's why there's specific information on that and specific requirements. And then specific guidance on our website just for that.
Staffing, obviously another critical requirement.
Notices to vacate has become a little more complicated in the new scheme.
In particular, around who you have to notify. So, we'll talk a little bit more about who you have to notify when you provide a notice to vacate.
And of course, fees.
Fees are the core of mostly your for-profit organisations. So, fees and the services that people are getting for these are very important as well.
So, there are specific requirements in the legislation around each of them. And there are fact sheets on our website for each of those.
Reporting. So, one of the key ongoing requirements is reporting to the Social Services Regulator and there were previous reporting requirements where you needed to report some things and then you could record some things in a register at your site.
That has changed.
So, those things that you used to record on site now have to be reported, but not immediately.
So, we'll get into that in just a little bit more detail.
So, here's a little, I just want to get you thinking a little bit, so, you've got two residents at your SRS that have a fight, not uncommon.
They're injured. Both residents are provided with first aid as you normally would.
You notice later on that one resident has slurred speech and so you send them to hospital for assessment.
Is that something that should be reported to the Social Services Regulator?
And if so, in what time frame?
So just have a think about that and have a think about how you might go about answering that if you if you don't have that already.
So, how do you know what to report?
We have, the team have very helpfully developed a guidance document, and there's a bit more guidance on the website as well. It's called, again very creatively, Guide to reporting a notifiable incident.
This is a critical document for you to read and understand.
And that'll walk you through, including examples, of what needs to be reported to the Regulator and in what time frame.
So, reviewing that guidance is a good first step. Attending a forum like this and then I would urge you to review your policies and procedures because it's one thing to know, it's another thing for your teams to know and really understand what they what they should be doing when an incident occurs.
And remember you as the provider are accountable for the actions of your staff, so if someone fails to report, it's on you to make sure that they have the appropriate tools to do that and understanding of what they need to do.
So, you need to tell us about incidents during service delivery.
So, our primary responsibility, our primary reason for being is safety of service users. That's the core of our, the core of our legislation.
So incident reporting is very important and we'll dig into a bit more detail about when and what.
The other requirement that's new is reporting changes to your organisation and operation.
So previously you had to apply to the Regulator to change directors or to change your manager.
You no longer need to apply for approval, but you do need to notify us, so they're called key personnel in the new framework.
So, you need to notify us of changes to your key personnel, among other things.
But that'll be the critical one that that you'll need.
You need to tell us about some notices to vacate, but not all.
When a resident needs more support than you can provide, so that was the old section 61/62 of the old legislation.
It's very much the same in the new legislation.
So if you have a resident that needs more support than you're able to provide, you need to be able to identify that, seek to get them the additional supports they need.
But if you can't do that, then you have an obligation to report to us that you are unable to secure additional supports.
We then notify the department, and the department takes action which I'll talk about more in a minute.
And you also need to notify us about any reportable transactions.
You need to tell the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing about notices to vacate in particular. There are some notices to vacate that you need to tell the department about. I know this was the subject of a community of practice meeting recently and that the department is putting out some guidance to say when and what needs to be notified to the department. We'll also have that in our guidance.
You need to tell, there are also new requirements in the legislation about telling residents support people, nominated support people about some things, so notices to vacate, some injuries, and some things around payments of security deposits or specific fees.
So, the guidance around what needs to be reported is available at that link down below there.
I know that this part in particular is a bit more complicated than it was in the old scheme.
There are good reasons for that, but we will make sure that we have appropriate guidance to help you navigate your requirements there.
The critical one for us at the moment is making sure that you understand incidents during service delivery and make sure that you're reporting them appropriately.
So, the team have developed this helpful kind of ready reckoner around what you report to who, and it includes health practitioners around medication errors and I know there was a question about that that we'll come to in the chat.
This is just a starting point. You need to double check and make sure that you understand yourself what your reporting requirements are.
So that resident who was injured being treated in the hospital, how do we identify whether we need to report that? So that guidance that I spoke about before, on page 2, it talks about severe harm or injury.
So, this person you could argue this was a harm or injury that needs to be reported under that.
But in particular, if you go to page 5 of the guidance where we talk about critical notifiable incidents, physical abuse resulting in hospitalisation that's a critical notifiable incident, so that should be reported to the Regulator by the next business day.
And again, this information is all in the guidance, but we've got those two types of notifications, around notifiable incidents - so those things that you would normally have recorded in your book on-site, and critical notifiable incidents – which are what you would have reported to the Regulator in the past.
So, I think they were called prescribed reportable incidents in the old scheme.
So as a ready reckoner, prescribed reportable incidents in the old scheme now critical notifiable incidents in the new scheme ,must be reported next business day.
Reportable incidents. What you would have recorded on site now need to be reported through the website within three days. So, I hope that helps just understand a little bit more about how those requirements work.
So, here's a bit of, this is what the website looks like.
So you can see that there are down the right hand side of the website is a is a drop down list.
There's a section there on reporting and we've highlighted that reporting a notifiable incident. That's called, section 48 is our shorthand for that. So that's the section of the Act that that those provisions come under.
And then reporting changes to your organisation operations you might hear that talked about a section 47 requirements.
It's again more information on the website, and the guides to reporting a notifiable incident is there as well, and that's downloadable.
You can keep that on your desktop, you can print it out, give it to your staff.
You can turn it into your own policies and procedures, which is what I would recommend.
OK.
So, injured resident, treated in hospital, minor injuries, returns home to your SRS.
So, you've reported that to the Regulator.
Regulator looks at that incident.
And we will look at all critical notifiable incidents, and in fact all incident reports as they come through.
We won't necessarily act on them.
So, the purpose of reporting is so that we can understand what's going on and make a determination as to whether the appropriate actions have been taken to protect any service users that are involved, but also any service users that might be impacted by that risk.
So, we might review the incident report and take no action.
In fact, that's what we will do in most cases because you will have done what you need to do to protect those residents and protect residents around them.
There may be instances where we might ask a couple of questions if the information isn't enough for us to make a determination about immediate risk.
There may be situations when we might investigate a bit more fully and you guys are used to reporting and you're used to the way that we respond to it.
So, really encourage you to think about how you can improve your systems to make sure that your staff and residents are aware of what needs to happen when.
So, draft and regularly review your policies and procedures.
Train your staff in your policies and procedures. It's no good if it sits on the shelf and no one knows what's in it.
Review the feedback that you received from the Regulator.
So, if we're in in contact with you a lot after incidents happen, then maybe you need to think about what am I providing to the Regulator to help them understand what we've done in response to an incident?
And the community of practice is obviously very useful as well.
Training requirements. So, obviously staff, you know your facilities are only as good as the staff that you support to do the job.
So, there are requirements in the legislation around staff training and qualifications. So, they must be qualified to deliver the safe services to do the job.
There are, for the SRS’s there are specific requirements, particularly around personal support coordinators and their training.
Again, I don't think that's any different to the previous scheme, but it is worth knowing that there are specific requirements.
So, there are specific requirements around minimum qualifications for personal support coordinators and other staff depending on the scale of your facility.
There are requirements around first aid and other things like that.
Mental health training, again no surprises there.
And first aid training, as I've said must always be someone on-site who has first aid training.
One of the questions that we've had quite a bit is what happened to the training that the old HSR used to provide, or the Department used to provide?
That training went quite a bit beyond what a regulator would normally do and what a regulator can do.
We're currently, our focus at the moment is guidance and education - mostly written to help people understand the new scheme.
And we're looking at other forms of guidance and education as well. So how can we support people to understand what the requirements are?
The Department, through Homes Victoria, still have a role in terms of sector capacity building and helping the sector, helping with the sustainability of the sector.
And I know that that through the community of practice they're looking at what they can do to help providers to understand what they need to do and look at, you know, potentially any opportunities to provide more guidance there.
So, in terms of resources, again, these are all live links, and these are all on our website.
So do please make sure that you and your staff are aware of these resources and preferably that you have actually translated this into your own policies and practices.
So, we're also about to provide that guidance that I talked about in terms of notice to vacate.
Fees, charges and security deposits and a checklist to support reporting a notifiable incident. So, we've got the guidance. There's a checklist on the way as well.
Really interested in hearing what else you think you need to help you understand the new scheme, and so we'll talk about that a little bit in a second.
That's the link to the website.
There's a general enquiries inbox there.
And if you've got queries about registration, so change of ownership, acquiring a new site, there's a registrations inbox as well.
And, we've done pretty well for time, I think. So, we've got about 20 minutes left for Q&A.
This is really, I know that there's been previous sessions that have talked about the new scheme.
This is our first as the SSR specifically for SRS’s. And I think this is probably the first in the series.
So, we're really keen to continue to talk to you about what you need, what supports you need to understand what the requirements are and how you can comply.
As Jonathan said, our best tool and our most frequently used tool is guidance and education.
You are accountable under this scheme, but we will do what we can to help you understand what those accountabilities and requirements are.
And now we will go to questions.
So, if you could please use the raise hand function. So, anyone who's not familiar with Teams that's on the top bar, there's a raise hand button that Devi's just found. Thank you, Devi.
Please turn on your camera, unmute yourself when it's your turn.
We have quite a big group here, over 50 people I think, so we'll have to limit the number of questions to make sure that everyone can participate.
I've got members of the team here who can answer questions as you put them in the chat as well.
So please do that and we will, if there's questions in the chat that we don't get to, we can respond after the webinar.
So, we will throw to Devi and I think you should be able to unmute yourself now, Devi.
We can't hear you.
I think I can unmute you maybe.
Ash Bhattarai (SSR) 36:58
Devi, you need to unmute yourself so you have access to the mic. You just need to unmute yourself.
Richard Marks (SSR) 37:07
Still can't hear you, unfortunately.
So, there should be a little microphone button up the top that you click.
Maybe while Devi’s working out her system we’ll go to Don, if that's OK?
Don? Oh, there we go.
Don Rodrigo 37:28
Yeah. OK. I got 2 little questions.
The one is when you said that any incident should be reported, some within, before the end of next business day.
Richard Marks (SSR) 37:41
Mm hmm.
Don Rodrigo 37:43
So, the first one is… what's the definition of end of the next business day?
See, what I call normal office hours or when is it, midnight of the day? I'm just asking because for a lot of operators I would say that finding time after about the so-called normal working hours is much easier…
Richard Marks (SSR) 38:08
Mm hmm.
Don Rodrigo 38:09
…than you know during the normal working hours when they are busy, so it will be good to clarify what that cut off point is.
Richard Marks (SSR) 38:16
Great question.
I think at the moment we've just said end of next business day, which would normally be, like in most schemes would be sort of 5:00 even though no one goes home at 5:00, that's usually the definition.
But we might just provide a bit more clarity on that, Don. So, we might take that one on notice.
Thanks for the question.
Don Rodrigo 38:34
The other one is, you say that all incidents should be reported? Is that right?
Richard Marks (SSR) 38:42
Not all incidents.
All the incidents that are captured by the guidance.
So, the guidance we've tried to articulate.
The legislation talks about serious harm or serious risk of harm. We've tried to provide guidance on what we think that is.
And so, if you're looking at the guidance, that's our interpretation of what serious harm or serious risk of harm is.
Don Rodrigo 39:07
So at the moment, we just go by the guidelines provided.
Richard Marks (SSR) 39:12
If you're working to the guidance, you'll be going well.
Don Rodrigo 39:17
OK. That's all. Thank you.
Richard Marks (SSR) 39:18
Thanks Don.
Devi, how'd we go? I still see a mute symbol on your...
No, I can't hear you. And I don't think I can manually unmute.
No, I don't seem to be able to.
Paul Paciocco (SSR) 39:37
I can probably address that answer in the Q&A function then Rich, if…
Richard Marks (SSR) 39:41
Terrific.
Paul Paciocco (SSR) 39:42
…because Devi has just said it's black and I cannot click, so I assume that's the mic button.
Richard Marks (SSR) 39:47
That’s weird.
Sorry, Devi. If you can drop your question in the chat, we'll answer it there. Thanks.
Any other questions?
I can't see any other hands.
Clare Moran (SSR) 40:05
There's two in the chat Rich, I'm not sure if you can see those.
Richard Marks (SSR) 40:10
Just try and get to the right screen.
OK.
Is there any problem with accepting a resident who is eligible for aged care but family wants the resident in the SRS?
So, my response to that would be a couple of things.
So, one you have to make sure that you're able to support the resident effectively. So, that's your core requirement.
So, if someone's eligible for aged care because they need the supports that an aged care can provide, in particular that kind of 24-hour nursing support, an SRS may not be the most appropriate facility.
So, make sure that you understand what their support requirements are.
And then I would say that, it comes down to a decision by the resident.
So, the family might have an opinion, but unless the family is the guardian of the resident, then it absolutely must be the decision of the resident themselves.
They still have choice and control in where they live.
But if you have that discussion with them and the SRS is where they want to reside, and you can support their needs then I don't think there's a problem with taking that resident.
Thank you for the question.
Linda, where do we go for SRS training requirements for the 40-hour as the other company doesn't want to do it anymore?
OK.
So, there are lots of companies that will provide training, particularly on those core elements that are specified both within the legislation, but also in the guidance.
I would recommend engaging with. So, anyone who is a registered training organisation can provide that training.
One of the questions we've got is potentially they can't provide bespoke or tailored training.
That is an area where I think that you as a sector can potentially engage, or potentially again through HomesVic.
So, if a number of you want to come together and say we want to do this training, we want something a bit more tailored to an SRS space, there are absolutely training providers who will do that.
And if you've got a group of you who are looking for that training, then that makes it much more appetising for them in terms of doing that work to tailor something and cheaper for you.
One of the other questions I got before the forum, was around the requirement to notify a health professional where there's a medication, either a missed medication or a mal-administration, and whether that needs to be done every time there's a missed medication.
Now, the wording in the requirement is reasonable steps, I believe.
And so, if you've got a resident who is regularly refusing medication.
Or it's low-level medication, you might in consultation with their health provider, be able to say actually I don't.
The health provider might say I don't need to know every time the resident misses this medication. I can get a weekly summary or a monthly summary and that will do.
My recommendation to you would be to make sure that you have that really clearly documented in that residents file.
So, if the health professional is saying I don't need to know every night when they miss a medication, it's low level, it's only if they want it, then that to me is reasonable steps.
Reasonable steps is not you making a decision that you don't need to report it. You need to do it in consultation with the health professional.
There was one more question I think that I had.
I can't see any more hands up, so I'll keep going with the, what I'll call a question on notice, but I might just need to dig it up.
I think it might have been on training actually.
Which I might have already covered.
Amy has put in the chat, .do we need to report an incident when the resident was under other services support? I.e., in a group outing with their NDIS service provider and the resident was injured or at hospital, incidents did not occur on our premises.
Good question, Amy. Really good question.
So, the wording of the legislation is during the course of service delivery.
Our interpretation of that and what we've put in the guidance is, particularly when you're providing a residential service, they are always essentially within your care.
So, we would urge you to report that.
Now this is a really good example of where reporting the incident does not imply a problem or a fault.
All it does is give us the intel to understand what's happening with that resident and with the service.
So it might be that we get lots of reports of incidents with that NDIS provider.
And so, we can then gather that intelligence and provide that to the NDIS Commission.
So, there might not be a problem with you or your services, it might be a problem with someone else.
It is really, really valuable intelligence for us and it helps us make sure that we know what's happening even.
So, that provider might be a state provider as well that we regulate for another service, so really important intelligence for us and we would say we would rather you report the incident even if you're not completely sure, we'd rather you engage with this and report it, then not.
Any other questions?
I thought there'd be lots of questions.
I'm hoping that means you're all busy reading the guidance.
Clare Moran (SSR) 46:16
There’s just another one that's popped in the chat. I think, Rich.
Richard Marks (SSR) 46:21
OK.
Whether it's possible to take back a resident who was previously evicted due to specific reasons?
OK, so I think this is one where I might just check that Paul nods along with me.
I think that's a decision for you with the resident, so we wouldn't get involved in your decision and the residents’ decision around whether that person can live in that facility.
Your decision has to be ‘can I appropriately support that person?’
So, if they were evicted because they were, you know, causing trouble, having fights, if you know, or anything above that, you'd need to think really carefully about what their support needs are and whether you can support both that resident but also the impact on other residents within the facility.
So, you have an obligation to both, but there's nothing. I can't recall anything in the legislation that says once you've issued an NTV, you can't have that person back.
Paul, give me a nod.
Happy with that. Yep. Excellent. Thank you.
Can I please clarify that we now only need to inform you if we want to nominate a manager instead of applying for the person from the regulation?
Yes, so that process where you would have to apply for either a manager or a director to be approved by the former HSR is no longer required.
You do need to notify us, under section 47, and you also need to make sure that that person has the appropriate skills, qualifications and experience.
So, directors, for most SRS’, what you would call directors, and managers are key personnel, so they help you run the SRS, they're making management decisions about the SRS and there are obligations around notifying us as of who they are and them having the appropriate skills, qualification and experience to do those jobs.
Thanks for the question.
Clare Moran (SSR) 48:25
Rich, there was a question quite early on in the chat from Gina, just talking about registration and how about a current registered provider registering a new service or site.
Richard Marks (SSR) 48:38
Yeah. So, I would encourage you to reach out to that registration inbox.
So that was in the slide pack. It's just ‘registration at ssr dot vic dot gov dot au’ [registration@ssr.vic.gov.au]. They can help you understand what the process is to add that site to your registration.
Thanks Clare, and Yanni has put a question in.
Self-harm.
Yeah, Yanni, so I think, so the question is for anyone who's not able to follow along, if we've had someone who self-harmed multiple times over the course of a period of days, are we able to include all of those incidents in one incident report to the SSR?
I would suggest, because that is a critical notifiable incident that you should.
Well actually, it's only, I think it is only critical if they require medical treatment.
So, it's only required to be reported to us within 24 hours if they require medical treatment in a hospital.
So, we've tried very hard to keep those critical incidents to a minimum so that you are able to run your facility, deal with the incidents as they come up.
So we've really pulled back on what needs to be reported to us by the next business day.
So, in that example if someone.
So self-harm is absolutely a reportable incident. Needs to be reported to the Regulator within that three-day time frame.
So, if someone's had multiple examples of that, then absolutely you can include all of those examples within one incident report as long as it's within that three business days.
If someone self-harms to the point where they need to be hospitalised, they need treatment in a hospital then that's a critical notifiable incident, needs to be reported.
And again, it's not about whether you have done something right or wrong in supporting that person, it’s making sure that we have the information that we need to be able to ensure that residents are receiving safe services.
Don, again, thanks for the questions.
I can't hear you though. Might need to enable his microphone.
Thank you. You should be able to unmute now, Don. Thanks.
Don Rodrigo 51:15
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can. Thank you.
This is just about, again, reportable incidents.
Now if a resident, say, for example, who is able to take public transport to go somewhere and they take a taxi or bus or family member helps them.
And in such modes of transport, if, say something happens and someone, I mean if they also sustain an injury, you see it for us. Is it our responsibility to report that to you?
Richard Marks (SSR) 51:55
If so, if they're injured on public transport, they've left the SRS, they're out on their own, they're free, they're free people. They're able to go out into the community, something happens, that's the question?
My advice would be, better to report it than not.
And again, it's not about the SRS provider, particularly if they've left of their own accord, but it could indicate something else.
So, I think it is important to make sure that if something happens to your resident, even if they've left the facility, if they're still a resident, it’s important to report that.
Don Rodrigo 52:36
Hmm.
So that means if something happens to someone after going to a hospital, incident in the hospital's care, and still one of your residents.
Now do you?
Richard Marks (SSR) 52:49
Well, I think that there's a good parallel there.
So, residents sometimes are transported to hospital for or having treatment in a hospital and subsequently die.
It happens. You guys support people with complex needs, and we understand that. And things happen to those people.
So, but it's important for us to know that that's happened for a couple of reasons.
One, so that we can make sure that that resident was receiving appropriate care.
Two, so that we understand what is happening with your resident cohort.
And three, so that we can inform others of what's happened.
So, in particular, people like the community visitors, who visit with and know some of these residents really well.
One of the things we do is let them know when there's been a death in a facility so that they don't go and find out on the spot.
So, there are a few really good reasons why it's important for us to know what's going on with the resident cohort.
Thanks Don.
Don Rodrigo 53:51
OK. Thanks.
Richard Marks (SSR) 54:10
Any other questions that you've seen, Clare?
Clare Moran (SSR) 54:13
There’s just two more in the chat, right down that I've just come in.
One's about the residential services agreement and one's about contacting the Regulator.
Can you see those Rich?
Richard Marks (SSR) 54:28
I can see the RSA one.
So, as part of the RSA we advise residents who they can contact. SSR is one of the services. No phone number for residents yet?
Yeah. OK.
So, at the moment we only have e-mail, I think.
Do we have a phone line as well, Paul that people can call if they have to?
I know that there used to be a phone line that existed that went to an answering machine.
Do we have that in place at the moment or is that something we need to look into?
Paul Paciocco (SSR) 54:56
That's something we're still looking into at the moment.
Richard Marks (SSR) 54:59
OK.
All right.
Thanks for the question, Gina, we will look into that.
And, regional contacts from Glen.
So, is there a contact at the Regulator for specific regions? Is there someone we can call to ask questions during this phase?
So, we do. So we've got the general enquiries inbox and some other sort of specific inboxes like the registration one.
There will, I think, often you have an authorised officer who is commonly at your site for inspections.
Those authorised officers are the same as they were under the old scheme.
So, the previous staff of the old HSR were transferred into the new SSR.
So, you can contact the AOs that you know. They can provide support and advice.
Or if you contact one of those inboxes, it will be forwarded on to the appropriate regional contact.
Question from Amy, still struggling to receive CV reports.
Ah, OK.
Amy, unfortunately, we don't have any control over CV reports.
I would suggest getting in touch with the Office of the Public Advocate, who supports the Community Visitor Program. They might be able to help work out what's going on there and why that can't get through.
That's actually a legislative requirement that those reports are provided to you. So OPA should be able to support with that.
Paul Paciocco (SSR) 56:47
And just to add to that, Rich, that they should be discussing reports on site with you at the end of their visit.
Richard Marks (SSR) 56:56
Yeah. Thanks, Paul.
And one from Linda, this might have to be the last one and Daniel's already answered it. He got there before I could. So great. Thanks Daniel.
So, I might throw. We're out of time, unfortunately.
As I said, we will have more of these forums and please let us know where you've still got questions and where you might need some additional guidance, but I'll throw back to Clare.
Clare Moran (SSR) 57:24
Thank you, Rich.
And so, as we wrap up our session for today, there will be another poll popping up on your screen and we'd really appreciate you filling that in.
You can also provide any feedback in the chat about how you found the session today.
So that concludes our event. Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to our presenters, Jonathan and Richard, and to many of you who submitted questions.
And also thank you to our team behind the scenes here who make it all run smoothly, in particular Ash, Lucy, Katie, Paul, Dan and Rebecca.
Have a great day, everyone and see you next time.
Richard Marks (SSR) 58:07
Thanks everyone. Bye-bye.
END OF TRANSCRIPT
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