January 2012 - Issue 35 - Disability Services, Department of Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services (Queensland Government)

January 2012 - Issue 35

Table of contents:

Happy New Year!
NMDS Compliance
Restrictive practices
Emergency & Crisis reporting
Diary dates for 2011-12
Internet updates
Are you an ‘other system’ user?
Help available

Happy New Year!

We hope you have enjoyed the festive season and we look forward to working with you again this year.

NMDS Compliance

As you would be aware, the release of grant payments from the department is reliant on the conditions of your Service Agreement being met. Both your National Minimum Data Set (NMDS) reporting and the provision of a Director’s Certificate are required to effect payment. Thank you to those who have already submitted their data for the second quarter.

Those Providers who use the Online Data Collection (ODC) to submit data can check compliance by running the Quarterly Reporting Checklist under the Reports menu. When all outlets in the relevant quarter display ‘Nothing more to do’ your reporting lodged is deemed compliant.

If you have any queries regarding data collection or require any assistance with your NMDS reporting, please contact your Regional Data Support Officer.

For information relating to contract compliance or other funding obligations please contact your Principal Program Officer or Community Resource Officer.

Restrictive practices

At the end of August, the NMDS team of Regional Data Support Officers also took over the role of monthly data collection for restrictive practices.

You may be aware that since then, Disability Practice Improvement (DPI) and the SRS teams across the state have increased their contact with services regarding reviews and first-time consents for restrictive practices. This was a result of the end of August data collection, which highlighted some ‘teething issues’ regarding the timely progression of obtaining consent for a plan/review.

This process resulted in us postponing the ongoing monthly collections of restrictive practice usage in order to provide Services and Guardians (with some assistance from DPI & SRS) time to resolve these issues.

We expect to re-start monthly collection early in 2012 and will be in touch when a date has been confirmed.

If you are using restrictive practices that have not been reported to the Department, or you were not contacted in the August collection and should have been, please contact your local Regional Data Support Officer so we can remedy this situation.

Questions regarding a specific case?

Please contact your local Individual Response Leader (IRL) or Sarah.James@Communities.qld.gov.au

Emergency & Crisis reporting

Please note that under the Growing Stronger program, Time Limited Response (TLR) funding has replaced the Emergency and Crisis grants. Because TLR is an invoiced service, funded non-government service providers will not report it in their NMDS data.

If you require historical data for the outlets which used to provide Emergency and Crisis services please email the Data Services team. See under Help Available for contact details.

Emergency Response funding is still provided to coordinating non-government organisations funded by DCCS to support one-off direct service responses for individuals and their families facing critical/emergency situations; report these services under 2.062 Case Management for DS NMDS reporting purposes.

Diary dates for 2011-12

Quarter	Start Date	End Date	Reference Week	Due Date
2	01-Oct-11	31-Dec-11	25-31 Dec 2011	15-Jan-12
3	01-Jan-12	31-Mar-12	25-31 Mar 2012	15-Apr-12
4	01-Apr-12	30-Jun-12	24-30 Jun 2012	15-Jul-12

Internet updates

The DS NMDS site has been updated to reflect the 2011-12 reporting period. This site contains reporting requirements, frequently asked questions, resources, newsletters, a glossary of terms, links to disability statistics, contacts and general information on the DS NMDS. See under Help Available in the next column for contact details of your regional support officer and for online and email contact details

Are you an ‘other system’ user?

If you submit your data using external software or other in-house systems this applies to you.

Email Subject

When submitting your data via email, please include your service provider name and location in the subject header. This will make it easier for us to track and monitor your quarterly returns.

The subject naming convention for the email is:

Submission

Eg: Q2 Disability Care Brisbane Submission 2 service user errors corrected

File Names

File names may contain additional information such as the reporting period, agency or service type outlet id numbers or other information as long as the file name contains at least one keyword. However, Data Services would prefer that you follow a set format when naming files.

File Type	Keyword
Funded Agency file	Funded or Agency
Service Type Outlet file	Outlet
Service User file	User
Services Received Places file	Received and Places
Services Received Hours file	Received and Hours