In times of significant change and market disruption people yearn for unbiased, impartial information and advice to make their decisions. Some people also need support to navigate a changing system that doesn’t always deliver on equity. There is no doubt in my mind that advocacy services must be resourced and delivered outside the care systems they are operating in. They need to be impartial – not just satisfied with being “at arm’s length”. Getting impartial advice can be di

Policy and funding reforms are impacting on services, systems and sectors. Ticking a box to comply to a set of standards is not enough. Linking concepts of quality and translating them into business systems and front line practice will give you the cutting edge, in what is set to be a highly competitive community support market. Quality, focussed on consistently safe and outcome driven service provision will be the focus of government, providers but most importantly customers

Remember the chaos and conspiracy theories of 1999. The Y2K bug was going to be catastrophic and people everywhere were planning and creating all sorts of scenarios. To be honest however, all I could think of was dancing to Prince – “we gonna party like it's 1999” and really getting excited to be there as the clock ticked into a new year and a new century. As we know it wasn’t disastrous. Our world did not change as we moved from 1999 to 2000 and life continued as it would

In a few month’s time, the NDIS will roll out across most of NSW and people and organisations are clamouring to be ready. One of the reasons for this is that government; the architect, driver and regulator of it, is still not ready. This is despite the long lead time, the bipartisanship and the trial sites. So why…? If government was a business, would they have the ability to take 2 to 3 years to get ready? Would they be afforded the luxury of that time to get everything in p

This time thirty two years ago, I just finished my HSC and was set to start my new job at Grosvenor Hospital in Summer Hill, Sydney. As a nearly 18 year old I got a job through a contact to work with children with disability. My job was to care for them in their residential care setting. My supervisor was Sister Winifred. It was nearly Christmas 1983 and a significant change in care and support was about to begin. The deinstitutionalisation of care was picking up pace and aft

Just when you thought you had it all under control, something changes. Most organisations are aware of the ‘’hyper-connected consumer’’ … we have been told that people are now connected 24 hours a day; if they don’t like something there is a website they can criticise you on; if you don’t have multiple social media channels, no-one knows who you are, etc. – the reality is that is true and with the advent of a more ‘’open market’’, many organisations in the social care sector

With so much talk about change, NDIS, person-centred planning, strategy, planning and the like, one of the core concepts that has been overlooked is that of risk. By risk, we are not talking about operational risk, but strategic risk and very specifically, risk appetite. It is not a concept frequently discussed or dealt with by Boards yet will soon become a very significant issue as organisations grapple with the impending changes and opportunities. At its simplest, risk appe

The principle that financial markets accurately reflect the underlying value of traded stocks has been widely accepted in the investment world since the 1960s. It is predicated on the assumption that investors make buy or sell decisions based on a rational view: that is, they consider all the relevant information, and markets allocate capital to companies efficiently. More recently, however, the rational view has been under attack from adherents of behavioural finance who sug