How to Write an NDIS Violence, Abuse, Neglect, Exploitation and Discrimination Policy

Violence, Abuse, Neglect, Exploitation and Discrimination is one of the five standards under Rights and Responsibilities in the NDIS Core Module. The outcome requires that each participant accesses supports free from violence, abuse, neglect, exploitation or discrimination, and specifically:

• Policies, procedures and practices are in place which actively prevent violence, abuse, neglect, exploitation or discrimination
• Each participant is provided with information about the use of an advocate, including an independent advocate, and access to an advocate is facilitated where allegations have been made
• Allegations and incidents are acted upon, each participant affected is supported and assisted, records are made of the details and outcomes of reviews and investigations where applicable, and action is taken to prevent similar incidents occurring again

This article walks through the areas to include, or at the very least consider, while you're writing your policy and procedure.

Active prevention

The first indicator asks for practices that actively prevent harm, not just how you respond when an incident occurs, so include in your policy what you do to proactively make harm less likely.

Consider:

• Recruitment and screening, including worker screening checks, referee checks and how you handle a concerning employment history
• Induction and training on the NDIS Code of Conduct, what the five terms mean in practice, and what a worker should do if they see something
• Staff supervision that includes observation of practice as well as discussion
• Participants knowing their rights, and knowing how to raise a concern
• More than one way to raise a concern, so a participant isn't limited to telling the worker involved or their manager (also make sure complaints can be made anonymously, and that this is easy to do)
• Supporting participants to maintain contact with family, friends, advocates and community
• Consistency of workers, and stable relationships between participants and the people supporting them
• A culture where workers feel comfortable enough to raise concerns about other workers, and know how to do so
• Reviewing your incident and complaint data for patterns

Prevention is also where this standard meets your human resource management obligations, so the two should be consistent with each other.

Advocacy

The second indicator includes two separate obligations that you'll need to meet.

Information about advocates must be provided to every participant. This applies to everyone you support, so don't only provide this information once a complaint is made or issue is raised. Participants should know what an advocate is, that independent advocacy exists, and how to find one. Include this in your participant handbook or information pack, in a form they can understand, and record that it was provided.

Secondly, you need to facilitate access to advocacy when an allegation is made. This includes providing advocacy contact details, offering to make contact on the participant's behalf if they want that, giving them somewhere private to speak, allowing the advocate to be present, and not treating the advocate's involvement as a problem or intrusion.

The Disability Advocacy Finder is a good starting point for identifying local services, but note that the choice of advocate belongs to the participant.

Responding to allegations

Four requirements to cover in your policy regarding allegations:

• Acting: What happens immediately, who gets told, how the participant is kept safe, and what you do about the worker involved while the matter is looked into further.
• Support for the participant: Who checks in with them, what they're told about the process and when, access to an advocate, counselling or other support if they want it, and how their supports continue in the meantime.
• Records of reviews and investigations: What was alleged, what you did, what you found, and what you decided. Where you conduct an investigation, note who does it and how you keep it independent of the people involved.
• Preventing recurrence: What changed as a result, and how that change was communicated to workers. This connects back to the prevention measures in the first indicator, which should be updated when a review identifies a gap.

Harm between participants in shared living

If you deliver Supported Independent Living, the SIL Practice Standards also look at harm, bullying and conflict between the people living in a house.

The SIL Safeguarding standard asks for policies and procedures setting out worker responsibilities in identifying, assessing and responding to risks such as bullying and conflict in the home, and for safeguarding approaches that address conflict, intimidation and harm between participants. Your approach needs to acknowledge the risk and safety unique to each person while respecting their autonomy, and ensure that participants are consulted about them.

SIL workers should also be trained in de-escalation, trauma-informed practice and positive behaviour support. Participants receiving SIL supports should be supported to maintain access to family, friends and community, and to build stable and consistent relationships with the workers supporting them.

For a SIL provider, your policy needs to cover what a worker does when one participant is harming, intimidating or bullying another, how you balance one person's safety against another's rights, and how the arrangements you put in place are agreed with the people they affect (and not just imposed on them).

Connecting to your other systems

Incidents

Your incident management system should cover recording, responding to and reviewing incidents of all kinds. This standard adds expectations for this category of harm, particularly supporting the affected participant and facilitating advocacy. Your procedures should clearly state what happens differently when an incident involves an allegation of abuse.

Once registered, several of the things this standard covers are reportable incidents with notification timeframes to the Commission, including abuse and neglect, unlawful sexual or physical contact, and sexual misconduct. Your policy should point to your reportable incidents procedure rather than restating it.

Complaints

An allegation may be made through a complaint rather than as an incident report, so both of these need to lead to the same response.

Independence and informed choice

This standard includes additional requirements regarding advocacy, including a participant's right to an advocate of their choosing at any time, so make sure if you have separate policies that they match here.

Checking your own policy

Questions to consider when reviewing/writing your policy:

• Does it cover all five terms, including discrimination?
• Does it document prevention measures as well as response processes?
• Is advocacy information given to every participant, in an accessible form, with a record that it was provided?
• Do you hold current contact details for advocacy services?
• Does your response procedure cover immediate action, support for the participant, records, and prevention of recurrence?
• Does it say how an investigation is kept independent of the people involved, or what you do when that isn't possible?
• If you provide SIL, does it cover conflict and harm between participants, and are those arrangements agreed with the people affected?
• Are workers trained on the Code of Conduct and on what to do about a concern involving another worker?
• Do you review incident and complaint data for patterns?