Mentoring, Consultancy and Support

Support and Consultancy

A&R Preperation

While your assessment and rating visit should be a reflection of your everyday practice, we understand that many services and educators become nervous in the lead up to their visit and worry that they will freeze! We regularly visit services and provide meaningful feedback on matters of compliance and quality practice. Our visits usually take place over several hours and include observation, discussion and review of documentation, policies, procedures and the physical environment. Services receive a comprehensive report after the visit, with actionable steps that they can take prior to their visit. Our visits provide educators with reassurance and confidence in their own ability to advocate for the work that they do and the way that they do it.

QIP Support

Does your Quality Improvement Plan need some work? Perhaps you are coming up to A&R and you are worried that your QIP isn't up to scratch? We can review your QIP and provide meaningful feedback that will support your team to feel confident moving into A&R. This may be a remote review, or where possible, one of our consultants will come into your service and observe how the practice connects to the QIP. If you don't even know where to start, we can come in and do a QIP development workshopping session with your team - getting everyone focussed and on the same page!

Regulatory Authority Submissions and Responses

Over the last five years, we have worked with many services who have received A&R reports that they were not satisfied with, or have received compliance or show cause notices. The support for each of these has been varied, however this usually involves detailed discussions about the matter and in the event of compliance concerns, advice and support with implementing appropriate changes such as policy development or review and the development of procedures and practices. Our support often includes the drafting of formal responses to these matters in a thorough, comprehensive and professional manner. As a result of this support, the regulatory authority has instructed several services to engage our support on an ongoing basis as a condition of their service approval.

Policy Revision and Guidance

We know that policies are a vital part of service operations, and that many policies are required under the national regulations. We regularly work with services to review and amend policies to ensure that they are not only compliant, but meaningful to the individual service. As such, we expect that service stakeholders are highly involved in this process.

Management Committee Support

For seven years, Nicole was a nominated supervisor of a community based long day care service and saw first hand, the challenges that volunteer, parent run management committees face on a daily basis. Asking parents to take on management of a service is a massive responsibility, and many committees do not feel equipped to handle the challenges of service operations. We work with management committees to bridge the gap. This support may include attending committee meetings, providing training to management committee members, facilitating planning sessions and email/phone support for specific matters (HR, service practices, policies etc.)

Recruitment Support

We know how hard it is to get the right team for your service. We have worked with many services over the years in the recruitment process. We recognise that this looks different in every service, and our support has ranged from drafting advertisements, reviewing applicants, preparing interview questions, sitting on an interview panel and preparing position descriptions and employment agreements, as well as supporting the new team member to transition into the service.