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New model for supporting disabled people

After talking with disabled people, their families, providers and the wider disability sector, the Ministry has developed a new model for disability support services.

Disabled people want a good life and more choice and control over support they receive. After talking to disabled people, their families, providers and the wider disability sector, the Disability Support Services (DSS) Group at the Ministry of Health has developed a new model for disability support services. DSS are demonstrating this new model in Tauranga/Western Bay of Plenty over the next year, working with the local community to make sure the model works well.

What is different about the new model?

OLD WAY - Someone else makes decisions about what support you get and when you get it

NEW WAY - With support, you decide what’s important to you to have a good life

The new model has four components:

  • Information and assistance - Local Area Coordinators walk alongside the disabled person, help them work out what they want from life, help them build community networks
  • Funding - Moving towards giving funding rather than types and levels of services and increased use of self assessment (Note: funding is not given directly to the disabled person. Allocated hours are given a monetary value which the person can decide how to use and who to pay, within MoH policy)
  • Buying support – More choice and control over what disabled people can buy with the funding by increasing availability of Individualised Funding and making supports more flexible
  • Quality of support – Better ways for disabled people, MoH and providers to confirm that people are having a good life.

Workstreams

The work programme is organised into four workstreams which correlate to each of the four components of the model:

Work stream One – Information & Personal Assistance. The main purpose of this team is to refine the Queensland Local Area Coordination (LAC) manual to be available for Local Area Coordinators to use when they are engaged within the demonstration site. The manual will also be reviewed by the Local Working Group.

Work stream Two – Allocation. This work stream team is looking at how to increase the use of self assessment, and reduce the use of assessments by professionals. They are also looking at how to change to allocating funding value rather than types and amounts of service.

Work stream Three – Purchasing. This work stream team is tasked with developing ways to make Individualised Funding (IF) a more available and more flexible option in the Tauranga/Western Bay of Plenty demonstration site.

Work stream Four – Accountability & Evaluation. This team is tasked with proposing new forms of accountability for disabled people, the Ministry and providers to ensure the focus is on disabled people having good/everyday lives. They are also initiating base line research on people’s current experiences and longer term developmental evaluation of how the new model demonstration works.

Background

The Report of the Social Services Select Committee’s “Inquiry into the Quality of Care and Service Provision for People with Disabilities (www.parliament.nz)” in September 2008, outlined a number of recommendations that the government needed to respond to. The Government Response to the Select Committee’s Report (www.parliament.nz) in February 2009 accepted the Committee’s conclusion that improvements should be made to disability services. Existing development work across government agencies was expanded into a wide-ranging work programme for making those improvements.

The Disability Support Services Group within the Ministry of Health is responsible for many of the initiatives set out in the government response. One of these was that the government directed officials to investigate how Local Area Coordination-type processes might be implemented in New Zealand and the desirability and feasibility of doing so.

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Page last updated: 21 February 2013