Monday, April 4, 2011

Doing It Ourselves in Aged Care, Chronic and Mental Illness, Disability and Special Education


SOCIAL ENTERPRISE PARTNERSHIP
THE SELF-MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE
Melbourne 2-3 May 2011
Register Here
 


Key Speakers

Anita Gordon has been self-managing her disability package in the ACT for the last two years, and has been able to increase her number of support hours threefold by doing it for herself. Her method is now being trialled throughout the ACT.

Rachel Johnson is Director of the Mamre Family Support Associaton in Brisbane, which has been assisting families to self-manage funding and directly employ support staff for over ten years.
Justin McNab of the Blue Mountains Chronic Disease Self-Management Project has been developing self-management strategies and supports for consumers with a chronic illness.
Rob Gill is General Manager of Manawanui In Charge Ltd in Auckland, which pioneered the introduction of individualised funding in New Zealand between 2005 and 2009.

Lyn Zanchetta manages her 40 year old daughter Lisa's Home First disability package.
Margaret Gray managed her 92 year old mother's EACH aged care package.
Siegried Drews managed his wife Mardi's 24 hour care needs through a technology portal he designed himself to assist in the direct employment of staff.
Suzette Gallagher has managed her 45 year old son Shaun's disability package for many years.
George Vassilou manages both his ageing mother's care package and his 23 year old daughter Natasha's disability package.

This conference  will review developments towards self-management of supports and services in disability, aged care, chronic illness, mental health and special education.

It is concerned with the practical question of "How" to make self-management viable and doable by large numbers of individuals and families. It will examine working models from around Australia and New Zealand, and explore strategies for making self-management happen on a large scale. It will explore ways of improving the available infrastructure, technology tools, peer and professional supports.

The style of the conference will be one of learning from peers, sharing information, and networking.
Papers, presentations, workshops and displays are invited on the conference themes.

CLICK HERE to express an interest in contributing a paper or presentation. 

KEY PRESENTERS

Anita Gordon - Disability

Anita has been using a wheelchair since she had a stroke in 1998. Over the last two years she has been developing a method of self-managing her ACT disability support package.


By self-managing her funding and directly employing her own support staff, Anita has found that:
  • She has been able to increase her number of support hours by three times, after cutting out administration and brokerage fees payable to agencies.
  • Her costs of purchasing equipment have dropped by up to 50% compared to the cost of purchasing through government.
  • Support workers have become affordable on weekends and public holidays.
  • Relationships with support workers and continuity have improved by selecting and dealing directly with support staff.

Click here to register your interest in Anita's model if you or a family member receive a disability support  package


George Vassilou - Ageing and Disability

George is a pioneer in family-management of disability supports for his daughter Natasha. George is also a pioneer in applying the same methodology to the management of supports for his elderly mother.

Following a profile of his family-managed arrangements on The 7.30 Report on ABC Television in November 2009, George has, with approval from the Federal Minister for Aged Care, established an important precedent - families are entitled to self-manage Home and Community Care funding packages for their family members if they want to.
We'd like to hear from families wanting to self-manage their aged care package. We will make available tools for managing the package, supply information and support on how to proceed, and direct families to appropriate host agencies willing to host family-managed arrangements.
Click here to register your interest in George's model if you or a family member receive an aged care package


Rachel Johnson - Mental Health and Disability
Rachel is Director of the Mamre Family Support Associaton in Brisbane, which has been assisting families to self-manage funding and directly employ support staff for over ten years.

Mamre has developed a philosophy of the "natural authority" of families in the care and support of their loved ones, which underpins its radically innovative work.
"Mamre believes that, regardless of capacity or skill, families have a natural authority and are entitled to influence the direction of their family member's life, if they have remained faithful and committed to that person's development and well-being.
Mamre intends to be a radical Christian community response to the expressed needs of families, rather than a professional service response."
Click here to register your interest in Mamre's philsoophy and approach to self-managed disability supports.


Siegfried Drews - Health and Disability
I retired about seven years after a career in the corporate world, but life took an unexpected turn when my wife Mardi developed Motor Neurone Disease. I became busy coordinating her care, which involved 24 hour nursing support, and having carers coming through the house at all hours.
Over the past five years, I have developed a technology platform to support the planning, logistics, administration and reporting functions associated with supporting Mardi's care. I found that doing all this manually is a nightmare. I also found that the agencies that supply carers can't be relied on, and so I've developed a match-making system for families who need carers to find and employ them directly. It's like an internet dating service for families who need carers.

The result is a portal through which Mardi's carers could be employed, rostered and paid electronically, other supports and services can be budgeted for, purchased and accounted for, and her public funders (the Victorian DHS) can view the flow of people and money as they wish. The portal integrates planning, budgeting, financial transactions, reporting, and local networking (if required) in a format applicable to children and adults in disability, chronic illness, mental health, aged care and education.
   
I am getting old so I have no interest in commercialising this. There will be no licencing or contracts. It will be free for users with the exception of a set-up fee (which I want to keep as low as possible) and an optional fee for customisation (if required). Its purpose is to enable self-management and to leverage integrated person-centred arrangements for consumers and families on a very large scale.
The portal is currently being trialled in two settings in Victoria. I will be available from the beginning of 2011 for large scale use.
It is incredible that the business practices of service providers in the field of care are about 30 years behind the rest of industry. We need a lot of political pressure from people with disabilities and families to force them to catch up and focus on the 'customer' and not on themselves.
Click here to register your interest in Sieg's technology platform for self-management.
 


Siegfried's self-management tool is called Web2Care. It was developed as a web-based portal through which his wife Mardi's carers could be rostered and paid electronically; additional supports could be budgeted, purchased and accounted for; a complete financial account could be generated electronically, and Mardi's public funders could view the flow of people and money as they wish.
The portal also contains a match-making function linking support workers with people who are seeking support workers, so that support workers and support recipients can directly find each without having to work through agencies.
CLICK HERE to see a presentation on Web2Care.
The tool has three modules:
The Rostering Tool (Admin2Care) enables you to produce a roster of support, share this roster online with support workers so that variations can be made easily, with a time-tracker device for recording time worked, a wage and costs calculator, and a payslips, invoices, and report generator.
The Match-Taking Tool (Match2Care) enables support workers and people requiring support workers to find each other using a visual data base built on Google Maps to enable local matches, with search results linking to support workers and support recipients' profile pages, and to respective rosters showing 'Vacant Shifts' and 'Support Worker Availability'.
The Accounting Tool (Account2Care) enables you to keep track of all financial transactions and generate reports, not only related to your support activity, but to private and other business matters if you wish.

The process for participation is simple: consumers/families are invited to express an interest in this self-management tool. An initial assessment is made on suitability, and on approval participants register on the web-based system. Data entry is end-user controlled and maintained. 
Click here to register your interest in Sieg's technology platform for self-management.

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