Issue 131
1 June 2009
The Australian Disability Enterprises Excellence Awards recognise, encourage and promote the significant contribution that Australian Disability Enterprises make in improving the lives of people with disability. The Awards provide an opportunity to recognise the dual focus of Australian Disability Enterprises as viable businesses that also provide high quality employment to people with disability.
The inaugural Australian Disability Excellence Awards were held in Brisbane as part of the National Disability Services Employment Conference 2008 and were highly successful and well received by the sector. The Australian Disability Enterprises Excellence Awards 2009 will be presented to finalists at this year’s National Disability Services Employment Conference on 7 September 2009 at the Hilton Hotel, Sydney.
The Department is now calling for nominations for the Awards. If you know of an Australian Disability Enterprise that has made a significant contribution to ensuring that people with disability are encouraged to participate to their full potential in employment, tell us about it by nominating them for an Award.
To nominate an Australian Disability Enterprise for an Award, or to make an enquiry about the Awards:
Email: excellenceawards@fahcsia.gov.au
Visit: FaHCSIA Website
Phone: 1800 108 196
Nominations close on 20 July 2009.
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The nomination period for the 2009 National Disability Awards has been extended. Nominations will now close at 5.00pm AEST on Monday 22 June.
If you have made, or know someone who has made a contribution to the disability sector, tell us about it by nominating for the 2009 National Disability Awards!
There are five award categories in 2009:
For information on the Awards, and how to nominate, visit www.idpwd.com.au or phone 1800 440 385.
If you know someone you think deserves the recognition of a National Disability Award, but are not sure which category to nominate for, email idpwd@fahcsia.gov.au or phone 1800 440 385.
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The Disability Services Census for 2009 will be sent to service providers on 1 July 2009 for completion by 24 July 2009.
To reduce the administrative burden on Australian Disability Enterprises, FaHCSIA will again source most of the required information from FOFMS. To ensure that we have the most current information, Enterprises should update their service and consumer data in FOFMS before 17 June 2009.
All FaHCSIA funded supported employment (also known as Australian Disability Enterprises), advocacy, print disability, and disability information and captioning services will need to complete a PDF form to give service outlet level information. This will be sent to your general email address on 1 July 2009.
Supported employment services will also be required to complete an assessment form for each consumer. Service providers can log into FOFMS to access these forms from 1 July 2009. Navigate your way through FOFMS to the ‘Cases’ screen and query the ‘Case’ record associated with your ‘Client’ using their ‘Case Id’ or name. Once you have selected your Case Id the following screen will open for you to complete the Disability Services Census 2009 – Consumer Form under the Assessments Tab.
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The Consumer Form Task Card and 2009 Data Guide containing detailed instructions and definitions for the Disability Services Census 2009 are available in the FOFMS Literature Portal.
The Data Guide is also available on the FaHCSIA website.
Should you require further information about the Disability Services Census, you can contact the Disability Services Census Helpdesk on 1800 550 244 or via email at disability.census@fahcsia.gov.au[ top ]
From 6 April 2009 FaHCSIA removed the requirement for Funding Level 1 DMI reassessments.
In certain situations the level of assistance required to maintain a Funding Level 1 client in employment may need to be reassessed. A DMI reassessment may be initiated by you if you think that the support needs of a client have changed. You should refer to the DMI reassessment Trigger Table to help you make this decision and include circumstances where:
Please refer to Annexure C of the DEA Funding Agreement for the DMI reassessment triggers table.
If you elect to complete the DMI reassessment for Funding Level 1 cases remember you will still need to collect appropriate evidence to support your answers. This change is for Funding Level 1 cases only and does not negate your requirement to complete DMIs for other Funding Levels or any other requirements under the DEA Funding Agreement.
If you have any questions regarding the removal of the requirement for DMI reassessments for Funding Level 1 cases please contact the CBF Helpdesk on 1800 034 887 or at Helpdesk.CBF@fahcsia.gov.au
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It is important to note that Intake assessments, Initial DMI assessments and DMI reassessments are not finalised for the purposes of funding until they are ‘Authorised’ on FOFMS.
Whilst the status of an assessment may say ‘Completed’, indicating that the final step has been concluded, the assessment must be ‘Authorised’ by an appropriate person before the information contained in the assessment becomes effective on FOFMS. 'Authorising' an assessment is vital to ensuring that the assessment has been completed correctly and that the information is accurate, and thus is a very important and final step to the assessment process.
FOFMS does not recognise any assessments that do not have an ‘Authorised’ status as being finalised, even if all of the assessment questions have been answered.
If you have any questions about the process of Intake assessments, Initial DMI assessments and DMI reassessments on FOFMS please contact the CBF Helpdesk on 1800 034 887 or Helpdesk.CBF@fahcsia.gov.au
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When caseworkers are managing their case workload they should not rely solely on the activity reminders on their home page. Caseworkers can run regular reports and queries to better manage upcoming DMIs and other activities.
The predefined case queries are searches in the ‘Case Screen’ view on FOFMS that have already been set-up for Service Providers. We have recently amended and simplified the case predefined queries, so that there are now 13 preset searches available.
To access the predefined queries go to the ‘Case View’ screen and select one of the queries from the ‘Queries’ drop down menu as shown below.
A list of the case predefined queries is provided below with a description against each to assist caseworkers with managing their case loads.
| Name | Description of search |
|---|---|
| Active Cases | Cases with a status of ‘Draft’, ‘Started’ or ‘Returned from Suspension’. These are active cases and take up an Outlet Capacity place against your Agreement Schedule. |
| Active Cases in Employment Assistance Phase | Cases with a status of ‘Started’ or ‘Returned from Suspension’ in Employment Assistance Phase (Pre-DMI). These are active cases that have had an Intake Assessment Completed and Authorised but have not yet had a DMI Assessment. |
| Active Cases in Maintenance Phase | Cases with a status of ‘Started’ or ‘Returned from Suspension’ in Employment Maintenance Phase. These are active cases that have had at least one DMI Completed and Authorised. |
| CBF Cases Eligible for DMI Assessment | Cases in Employment Assistance Phase with an intake completion date (start date) greater than three months previous. These are the cases that could be eligible for a DMI assessment if the client has also reached an employment outcome over the last three months. |
| DMI Assessment overdue | Cases in Employment Assistance Phase with an intake completion date (start date) greater than eleven months previous. Most of these cases will only have one more Employment Assistance payment made and payments will then cease. The case will then be exited from FOFMS as these cases will not have reached an employment outcome. |
| DMI Pending Authorisation | Cases that have a DMI assessment or reassessment with a status of ‘Completed’ or ‘In Progress’. The DMIs are not finalised on FOFMS until the status has been changed to ‘Authorised’. |
| DMI Reassess due in 3 Mths | Cases that have a DMI reassessment date of today or three months into the future. If these DMI reassessments are not ‘Authorised’ on FOFMS three months after the DMI Reassessment date, payments will cease and one month later the cases will be Exited on FOFMS. |
| DMI Reassessment due this month | Cases that have a DMI reassessment date of today or 1 month into the future. If these DMI reassessments are not ‘Authorised’ on FOFMS three months after their DMI reassessment date, payments will cease and one month later the cases will be Exited on FOFMS. |
| DMI Reassessment Overdue | Cases that have a DMI reassessment date of yesterday or in the past. If these DMI reassessments are not ‘Authorised’ on FOFMS three months after their DMI reassessment date, payments will cease and one month later the cases will be Exited on FOFMS. |
| Draft Cases | Cases with a status of ‘Draft’. These cases take up an Outlet Capacity place against your Agreement Schedule, but you are not receiving any funding for this client. A case is not Started until the Intake Assessment is ‘Authorised’. |
| Exited Cases | Cases with a Status of ‘Exited’. These are inactive cases and are not taking up an Outlet Capacity place. |
| All CBF Cases | All CBF cases regardless of status type. |
| Suspended Cases | Cases with a Status of ‘Suspended’. These are inactive cases and are not taking up an Outlet Capacity place. |
If you have any questions regarding the predefined case queries or other general case questions, please contact the CBF Helpdesk on 1800 034 887 or Helpdesk.CBF@fahcsia.gov.au
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Do you have a case study about an Australian Disability Enterprise that you would like to share?
Each fortnight, disAbility e-news profiles an Australian Disability Enterprise, providing an opportunity for enterprises to share information and ideas. E-news is distributed to almost 3,000 readers and is available for anyone to view through the FaHCSIA website. If you would like your Australian Disability Enterprise featured in disAbility e-news, email disability.enews@fahcsia.gov.au
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Email disAbility e-news if you'd like more information on a particular issue or program in disAbility e-news or to let us know what you think of the newsletter.
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Your contributions to disAbility e-news are welcome. Do you want to let others know about your successes? Or how you engage with local businesses to create employment opportunities for people with disabilities? Email your story idea to disAbility e-news.
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