Allied Health Service Provider
What is required from your school under this Scheme?
The department has pre-screened Scheme providers for a variety of compliance and probity requirements. These include:
- Organisational and staff experience and ability to deliver allied health services to schools
- Business credentials and insurances
- NDIS registration status
- Working With Children Checks (WWCC) of provider staff who will deliver services under this Scheme.
Additionally, the department has entered into the Human Services Agreement with each participating provider. Under this Agreement, providers agree to comply with various laws, standards and policies.
Schools are required to do the following:
Probity checks: Regularly review the WWCC status of individual provider staff in eCPC (electronic Casual Pay Claims) to ensure it is current. This should be done prior to the commencement of services and at the start of each subsequent school term. If an individual provider staff member does not have a current WWCC clearance, they should be directed to email their request to sahs@det.nsw.edu.au to be screened prior to commencing their services.
Induction: Please follow your school’s specific processes for the induction of visitors. For further information about induction, you can refer to the induction checklist for external providers.
Your responsibilities to the department
The department is interested in how the Scheme has been used and its impacts on students and school staff. Key questions that you may wish to provide feedback on include:
- Did using the Scheme make things easier for your school when engaging an allied health provider?
- Did the Scheme resources meet your expectations? Were the resources easy to use?
- How much time did it save you, if any, compared to the previous engagements the school had with allied health providers?
- How valuable is this Scheme to your role? How could it be improved?
- What impact did these services have on your students and school staff?
You can provide this feedback directly to the department by completing the Feedback form or emailing us at sahs@det.nsw.edu.au
Issue Resolution
Issues of poor performance and/or working relationship should, as far as possible, be resolved by schools and providers through open lines of communication and a focus on achieving shared outcomes.
A guide on providing feedback and issue resolution is available to support this.
If further support is required to resolve an issue with a Scheme provider please email us at sahs@det.nsw.edu.au.
The Yandelora School case study
Yandelora School has put in place processes to integrate allied health services into student learning.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, this scheme is not compulsory. If your school has an existing relationship with a provider, or would like to work with a provider that is not prequalified, you are able to do so. Note that if a school wishes to engage a provider not participating in this Scheme, the school will need to conduct additional compliance checks as they will not be pre-screened under this Scheme. The Scheme aims to support schools by reducing the administrative burden that can be involved with engaging external providers.
Where a therapist employed by a therapy provider participating on this Scheme is not cleared on eCPC, ask the therapist to send their request for a clearance to sahs@det.nsw.edu.au. As part of this request, the therapist will need to submit a Declaration for Child-Related Workers, their Working With Children Check details and copies of identity documentation. The therapist is not to commence any service until they are cleared on eCPC.
The Specialist Allied Health and Behaviour Support Provider Scheme, is a panel of pre-qualified service providers for schools that wish to directly engage allied health services. Funding of these services is paid for through the school’s existing budget.
Externally funded providers are providers that are directly engaged and funded by a party other than the school, such as parents/carers.
Despite both types of providers being considered as ‘external’, the legal relationship to the school in each scenario is very different. Where the school directly engages an external provider, the legal relationship is between the school and the external provider. If the external provider is engaged by a parent/carer for example, the legal relationship exists between the parent/carer and the provider.
External providers approved to deliver services through the Scheme will have met some organisational requirements for accessing schools as part of the pre-qualification process. These include:
- Working with Children Status and completion of Mandatory Child Protection Training
- business credentials and insurances
- organisational and staff experience and ability to deliver services to schools
- NDIS registration.
This panel of pre-qualified providers means less administrative burden for school staff and a more streamlined process for the engagement and management of providers in schools.
Schools must continue to do the following when a pre-qualified provider is delivering services:
- Review an individual staff member’s Working with Children Check status on the department’s Electronic Casual Pay Claims (eCPC) system to ensure they continue to have clearance to work with children as a contractor. The department has requested that contractors who are new have all relevant documents and proof of identity on hand, and that they complete a Declaration for Child-Related Workers prior to commencing their first school engagement.
- Follow any of the school’s specific processes for induction of new visitors. Please refer to this induction checklist for external providers.