Webinars for providers

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Catherine Poutasi
All right, we might get started. Welcome, everyone. Tēnā koutou katoa.

I'd like to start with an opening Karakia.

Whakataka te hau ki te uru, 

Whakataka te hau ki te tonga. 

Kia mākinakina ki uta, 

Kia mātaratara ki tai. 

E hī ake ana te atakura. 

He tio, he huka, he haū. 

Tihei Mauri Ora!

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Catherine Poutasi
Welcome to the Disability Support Services provider briefing on the Residential Support Services panel agreement. I'd like to just go through a few things. I'll introduce myself and the other presenters and then go through some housekeeping before we start.

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Catherine Poutasi
Catherine Poutasi, I am the General Manager of Commissioning and Funding at Disability Support Services. I'd like to also introduce you to Trish Davis, who is our Director of Contracts and Funding, and Michael Hiscox, who's our Director of Procurement and Commercial.

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Catherine Poutasi
We are going to run through a presentation with you today and we will have questions and answers at the end. We are also recording this session to share with people who are unable to make the session. We will share it on the website. Your voice and face will be recorded, but your team's avatar and name—sorry--and your team's avatar and name might show on the screen. Feel free to not attend today if you do not consent to this recording. We will share this webinar on our website next week. As I said, we're going to run through a presentation. We'll have questions and answers at the end.

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Catherine Poutasi
Please write your questions in the Q&A chat only and we will be able to respond to those. If you look at the top left-hand side of your screen, there is an icon, and it says chat. Don't use that button. Use the question-and-answer icon with the question mark.

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Catherine Poutasi
So if you can type in your questions there, that would be great. Depending on how much time we have at the end, if we do run out of time to answer all of the questions, we'll be sharing those via e-mail with everyone next week, so please keep an eye out for that.

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Catherine Poutasi
I think that's it in terms of my welcome and introduction and the team will let me know if I've missed anything. So, let's move on to the session. We'll cover a little bit about DSS and community residential services. We will then go into the panel contract model. We'll talk at a high level about the feedback we've received and about the changes to the contract and key areas in the contract. And finally, we'll be ending with the transition process to the new contract and what you can expect from us. At the end, we'll have questions and answers. Thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it.

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Catherine Poutasi
We'll start with a little bit about Disability Support Services. Many of you will know this already.

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Catherine Poutasi
Disability Support Services is a business unit within MSD. We were set up following an independent review last year in August and then we were moved and shifted from Waikaha, the Ministry of Disabled People, into a Ministry of Social Development in September.

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Catherine Poutasi
We're responsible for providing essential support to around 50,000 disabled people, tāngata whakaha Māori, Pacific disabled carers and their whanau. We also deliver equipment modification services to approximately 100,000 New Zealanders and child development services to approximately 20,000 children.

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Catherine Poutasi
Our immediate priorities are to stabilise and strengthen our system. We're also focused on managing cost pressures and improving consistency, fairness and transparency, and designing A sustainable system that ensures certainty for people, whanau and carers.

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Catherine Poutasi
Our purpose is to be an accountable Commissioner, funder and steward of disability support across Aotearoa. So as a commissioner, we ensure services are effective, efficient and responsive now and in the future. As a funder, we ensure fair and transparent distribution of funding.

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Catherine Poutasi
And as a steward, we ensure a high quality of safe and suitable services. DSS fits within a wider system of disability support services across government, including health, education, the wider Ministry of Social Development.

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Catherine Poutasi
I thought I'd take the opportunity to talk a little bit about our commissioning cycle. I have met with a few providers already and I think providing some context and background in terms of our approach moving forward is really important. So, at the very beginning of our commissioning cycle and approach is looking at the data and analysis of needs at a population level. The second part of that is planning, designing and prioritizing. And I think in the past we may not have done a lot of that strategic thinking. We are now focused on developing commissioning plans for groups of services that are looking at a three to five year pian ahead. So that analysis, data gathering is really important at the front end so that we can plan appropriately for again three to five years for each category or group of services like we are doing for community group homes. We follow on from there as a decision gate or an investment decision.

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Catherine Poutasi
We look at procuring services for outcomes, so that's end-to-end procurement. So, we plan, source and manage. At the end of that is the contract. So, we're really focused on outcomes as commissioners and establishing those outcomes at the very front is important to be able to say we are commissioning effectively.

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Catherine Poutasi
Step 4 is about delivery and that's our enabling good life sites in Waikato, Palmerston North and Christchurch. If we move to step five, that's about measurement and monitoring and that's really ensuring we have KPIs and deliverables that we are regularly looking at and monitoring that that helps us ensure that we can measure the impact, we can measure the benefit, and we can manage performance appropriately. That also includes evaluations and audits. You may also have heard that we are rolling out an enhanced audit programme from January 2026 which will support this commissioning process.

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Catherine Poutasi
Moving forward, at the end of our commissioning cycle is dissemination of knowledge and translation into practice and that's really key to ensure that we learn from what we've done in the past and we certainly are in terms of rolling out this new community group home pricing model and new panel agreement.

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Catherine Poutasi
At the heart of everything is our disabled people, tāngata whakaha Māori, Pacific disabled people, carers and whanau, and that's why there's a kuru circling our disabled people. Around this commissioning cycle is also quality and assurance and making sure we have our own governance and structures in place to ensure that we can test things, we can identify risks early and we can respond appropriately. I thought it would be a really good opportunity to just provide this context for you in terms of our commissioning approach moving forward and as a strong and accountable Commissioner, funder and steward, this is what we will be working on as a commissioning and funding team and as a DSS group.

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Catherine Poutasi
Move on to the next slide. I did just want to touch on what we purchase. And so, for community residential services, we purchase a range of opportunities for disabled people who require high levels of support. We're focused on fostering relationships and maximizing disabled people's inclusion and participation in the community. We do this by looking and focusing on disabled people to ensure they can achieve goals, engage in life enhancing activities, have opportunities for learning and employment, participate in family and social life.

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Catherine Poutasi
We focus on essentially providing a good quality of life and a place that feels like home upholds. We're focused on upholding personal dignity, independence and we respect privacy. The residential service also focuses on delivering 24-hour support at a level necessary for people to feel safe and satisfied.

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Catherine Poutasi
We do this by delivering residential services for people with intellectual disabilities and physical disabilities.

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Catherine Poutasi
We move on to the next slide, and you look at the three boxes underneath. I did also just want to prioritise and highlight that we are focused on ensuring disabled people are supported by staff and workforce who understand their means of communication and can communicate effectively. We're ensuring we work flexibly with disabled people to determine how best to support them, and we're putting disabled people, tāngata whakaha Māori Pacific disabled people at the centre of our support to ensure greater choice and control.

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Catherine Poutasi
We'll move on to the next slide, which is about the request for application process. Oh, sorry, it's not. We're moving on to outcomes. So again, for outcomes in relation to our community group homes, we're focused on improving the experience of disabled people.

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Catherine Poutasi
We're focused on improving access and appropriateness of services and we're focused on stabilizing the price of residential support.

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Catherine Poutasi
Yeah, the request for application process. I just wanted to take a moment and say thank you very much for everyone participating in the RFA process. We do realise it takes a lot of time and effort to complete these processes and application forms.

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Catherine Poutasi
And for some of you, this was the first time you had gone through a procurement process. So, we do appreciate the time and commitment you've put in to submit these applications. We had 105 applications after an assessment process we took through 97 through to award.

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Catherine Poutasi
Ward and nine of those 97 are actually new providers. So, we'll be taking our new providers through a new onboarding process.

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Catherine Poutasi
I'd now like to hand over to Michael Hiscox, our Director of Commercial and Procurement, and he will take us through the contract structure.

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Michael Hiscox
Good to go to. Thanks, Kath. Yeah, I'd just like to echo, reiterate that massive thanks. I appreciate it was a lot of effort for people to go through the RFA process and it's been great reading everybody's responses and.

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Michael Hiscox
Seeing that response rate come through, it was a mammoth task on the team to go through and all the assessments, but it was really exciting going through it all and seeing what we had come up. So, a massive thank you for everybody that's participated in that as well.

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Michael Hiscox
What I'm going to talk through is probably the crux of the session today. So, I'll be touching on a bit about the panel contract and those sorts of things as a as a kind of refresher or a bit of a re overview.

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Michael Hiscox
From the from the sessions we had earlier in the year and from the reviews previously. And then I'll step through some of the feedback that we had and how we've incorporated some of that feedback or kind of our views on some of that feedback and how that's been incorporated into the contract and some of those key areas.

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Michael Hiscox
I can't promise it's going to be the most thrilling presentation part when we're talking about contracts and how I've presented it but bear with on that. There are some key parts that do come through in this in this. What I will also say is that all of the information is going to go live on the website.

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Michael Hiscox
Either at the end of today or hopefully first thing Monday morning. So, we'll get all these things up, which will include a table of changes as well. So, you'll be able to see the new agreements and all those things up on the website, but I'll talk about that in a second as well.

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Michael Hiscox
So just as a more of a reminder, more of a kind of re overview, this is the slide that we shared last time we held one of these sessions. But effectively what we've been aiming to do is put in place a panel of providers for residential services.

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Michael Hiscox
The purpose of this panel is really to create a consistent way of managing, managing providers and engaging with providers who deliver residential services for DSS and doing that across a consistent and open forum.

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Michael Hiscox
So this means everybody being on the same terms and conditions. It means having mechanisms around improving or the ability to improve services over time and all those sorts of things as well.

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Michael Hiscox
One of the key components to this panel model is the openness of this panel. So, the ability to onboard new providers over time as well As for providers to exit either through choice or whether there's performance challenges and those sorts of things.

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Michael Hiscox
Which I'm sure you will have picked up on through the contract reviews and that and those aspects. It's a bit of a shift for us in DSS to put this model in place, but it's a kind of really key and exciting part for what we're trying to do to make sure that we do ensure that consistency and.

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Michael Hiscox
And ensure that consistency and improve the way that we do manage the delivery of these services. So, it's it is quite a shift, and we appreciate kind of all the work that's gone into reviewing and feeding back in this space because it is quite a shift for us all in DSS and across the market as well. But it does create that kind of exciting opportunity.

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Michael Hiscox
For us to be able to have that platform to drive and drive forward improvements for the people that we serve.

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Michael Hiscox
The key benefits across this panel or across this model really is that it sets this kind of clear, consistent expectation across all providers and it does this across a really long-term commitment.

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Michael Hiscox
So as you'll recall from the contract and from the previous discussions, we're committing to a 10 + 5 + 5, so 20-year full term of this contract. That means we're in this for the long haul with you guys. We wanted to provide that certainty to the market, to providers who are who are providing these services for us.

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Michael Hiscox
That really in our, in our view will allow benefits to be driven and invested in overtime. So, we've not got this kind of short-term funding cycle. We're committing to a much longer-term engagement with providers.

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Michael Hiscox
And so that means that you know we're in these relationships for a long haul that kind of recognises that residential services are something that we know are going to be going to form a portion of what we do in DSS for the foreseeable future. And so, we just wanted to demonstrate that commitment to the market and allow that.

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Michael Hiscox
Allow that certainty to create the investment opportunities or those improvement opportunities as well. A key part of that long-term nature though is, is that flexibility. So, we wanted the ability to improve or adapt or things as we go through. So, we know that in five years' time it won't look exactly the same to how it.

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Michael Hiscox
Looks now doesn't look the same now as it did 5-10 years ago. So, we want that ability to sort of shift and change and improve this service delivery over that that period of time.

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Michael Hiscox
One of the other key areas of this model is that we've been referring to this as a residential panel. So how this kind of is structured is that it's for all residential services or it will be for all residential services that DSS.

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Michael Hiscox
Commissions with the ability to kind of have kind of core service areas underneath and obviously the first piece being the community residential services being commissioned under this contract model. But it does mean that if we introduce other services, whether it's.

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Michael Hiscox
Like aged care or another type of service which we might want to adapt or build over time that we'll be doing that under the kind of same consistent framework and terms and conditions for all the residential contracts that we have, which means similar rules, similar.

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Michael Hiscox
Conditions, similar expectations of standards of delivery and that kind of thing. So that will create allow us to create this kind of consistency moving forward, which is really important for us across what we do.

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Michael Hiscox
Some of the other benefits that we have, obviously this will enable us to embed the new CGH pricing model. So, it's a good tool for us to do that properly. And obviously there was lots of feedback and thoughts and comments in that space, but it allows us to have a kind of fresh clean start with that financial model or with that funding model.

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Michael Hiscox
As we move forward. So, there isn't kind of lots of historical funding going on in contracts as well. And it also gives us that through that openness or through the open panel, it gives us that ability to onboard new providers if the market changes or.

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Michael Hiscox
If somebody enters the market or decides to exit, we've got those provisions within that contract to be able to adapt who delivers against those same consistent terms and conditions. So, when we look forward, it's kind of presents a really good opportunity for us to improve how we how we Commission these services over time.

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Michael Hiscox
What I wanted to just jump through as well a little bit is around the structure of the of the contract. So, this should be familiar from the reviews that you that you did or from what you read as part of the RFA.

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Michael Hiscox
But really there's three components to this contract. So, we move through.

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Michael Hiscox
The first part being the panel agreement. So, this is really the piece that you'll be signing that we'll all be signing. It's a really short form agreement basically just pointing to this is us, this is you, here's what you're providing, here's which service area, etcetera.

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Michael Hiscox
But that panel agreement points to all of the relevant parts of the contract and those other relevant parts of the contracts are then posted online and maintained online. So, you'll be able to get access to them that way. And so that's just a commitment that it is. It's open so people can see what it is we're contracting against.

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Michael Hiscox
There's a few key tweaks to that panel agreement which you'll probably notice when you when you see these as they come out, but it's we've just tried to keep it really high level and really easy to for us to engage with each other through.

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Michael Hiscox
Yeah. So that's a nice straightforward way. It's kind of akin to the framework terms and conditions or the outcome agreement style model where we have something sat over here that we can reference the residential panel terms and conditions. So, these are the key conditions that will apply to all residential services in the future.

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Michael Hiscox
All going well, these are effectively having all of those key areas, all of those key obligations that you'll have reviewed, and this is where the majority of the feedback came through. So, we have here the terms and conditions and the first schedule, so schedule one which is all those definitions.

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Michael Hiscox
Terms and all those terms that have a specific meaning. This is one of the things that we'll have online and that will be available to access, and we'll be loading this up shortly as well, so you'll have access to that. The third part is then where we where it starts to become service specific.

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Michael Hiscox
So for community residential services, this is where we have the funding model, the reporting framework that's specific to community residential services, performance models. These are all those things which are slightly different for each of the service areas.

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Michael Hiscox
Areas and primarily then there's the service specification as well, which those of you who've been around lots of different parts of DSS or the system will know that we've got the service specifications that apply to different services that we Commission. So, this is really the community residential, the comrades.

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Michael Hiscox
Specific elements of this contract. We obviously had lots of feedback in this space as well, but they by having these as schedules, we're able to then adapt them and improve them over time as well.

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Michael Hiscox
What you'll see when on the website when it goes live with all this information is that you'll see a template panel agreement which will just provide as a kind of just to show how it works and then you'll see effectively.

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Michael Hiscox
All of those documents referenced down the right-hand side of this page. So, you'll see the terms and conditions and the and schedule one. You'll see community residential schedule 2-3 and four and that service specification is all going to be loaded up on the website for people to access and.

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Michael Hiscox
Yeah. And that's how we'll manage that openness and that consistency across, so everybody will know what's in there.

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Michael Hiscox
OK. So that's kind of the overview part, the refresher. What I wanted to do now is effectively step through the areas of feedback that we got on the contract and what we've done with that feedback or our positions against some of that feedback.

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Michael Hiscox
We had a whole pile of feedback come through on the through the RFA process which was which was really great to see. Lots of detail came through. We had a quite a fulsome, fulsome piece of feedback come through from NZDSM.

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Michael Hiscox
Which represented its membership, which was really good. I had a couple of sessions to talk that through as well. And then we had a whole pile of individual feedback come through as well, either from individual providers or just, yeah, against different applications that came through.

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Michael Hiscox
I'm not going to use this slide to talk through it, but that kind of just shows the sort of range of things that we got the feedback on.

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Michael Hiscox
What I will say is there's lots of detail in this feedback and as we step through and as you'll kind of see there's not heaps of detail on the slides that I'll step through, but we do have a table of changes that we'll be putting out on the website as well.

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Michael Hiscox
So that table of changes actually goes clause by clause and says what was the feedback that we received against this clause or what kind of feedback did we receive where there's been multiple bits, we've consolidated that, we've put that in as a as a summary.

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Michael Hiscox
And then we've put what up, what we've done about that feedback in the table as well. So, you'll see that table and it's really easy to track through where that feedback's been made and what those positions were. Yeah. So, I would really encourage you to take a look at that when it goes live on the website as well, which will be done.

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Michael Hiscox
Monday morning, it just, yeah, provide you'll be able to see the areas that you provided feedback into and what we've done about them. What I will say is I mentioned slightly before is I'm going to talk a reasonably high level through some of this feedback. I'm not going to go through word by word every change. I'm not going to have the contract on the screen or anything like that.

0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:27.719
Michael Hiscox
So I'll just talk through those key themes and then when you go and do your reviews next week and when you see all the documents come through, yeah, you that should provide that extra context as to why we've done certain things.

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Michael Hiscox
OK.

0:24:35.239 --> 0:24:50.639
Michael Hiscox
So what I've tried to do here is just sort of group the different pieces of feedback together. So, there's lots of detail behind each of these points, but I've just tried to group them so it's easier to sort of to discuss it really because they're common areas. So, what we had here was.

0:24:51.79 --> 0:25:10.879
Michael Hiscox
Whole range of feedback around things like certain reviews that people thought we should have or when points or when we should have reviews, different points in the contract and how the contract itself might be varied and that kind of thing. So, one of the things I wanted to touch on was the review process and.

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Michael Hiscox
Periodic reviews and particularly a lot of the feedback here came back to the pricing model or to the funding model. What we intend to do as DSS is have an annual review of the funding model, but what we didn't want to do is have that.

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Michael Hiscox
As a contractual clause that says we will do this at this time of the year. So, as we've kind of mentioned in various sessions before, our intention is that this model, this funding model will be reviewed and adjusted as drivers change. But a lot of that is naturally driven through the fact that we're a government agency and.

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Michael Hiscox
We have drivers outside of what we can control and so we need that ability to review things and then we wanted to hold that review separate to the contract. So, we haven't said it will be this exact cadence of review, but we do have that review mechanism built into the contract itself.

0:26:3.479 --> 0:26:22.519
Michael Hiscox
So how we would go about doing that, that review or how we would go about adjusting some of those things similarly around things like the rights of renewal. So, at that 10-year mark, in order to maintain that consistency, there was some feedback around how that renewal might take place.

0:26:23.39 --> 0:26:37.439
Michael Hiscox
Obviously renewals have to be accepted, but what we want to make sure is that we retain that consistency through any renewal periods across that panel. So, making sure that the way those renewals are rolled out will ensure that consistency across all the providers.

0:26:38.719 --> 0:26:53.559
Michael Hiscox
The other key part of this was around the conditions for unilateral variation. So, this is where we can just make changes to the contract for everybody. So, one of the things we want to do in order to ensure that consistency of the contract.

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Michael Hiscox
Is to be able to make those tweaks and adjustments.

0:26:58.239 --> 0:27:17.679
Michael Hiscox
What we what we intend to do there is make judgments based on the kind of scale of that change. So, there'll be some small things that or there'll be some things which are reasonably nonmaterial to be able to make changes on or will or a kind of positive impact changes the one of the examples being in that.

0:27:17.759 --> 0:27:33.879
Michael Hiscox
Funding model space. If we did want to roll out a new set of rates, for example, we would want to do that in one hit with everybody, providing some notice and that kind of thing, whereas other things were, for example, changes to the service specification we're committing to.

0:27:35.279 --> 0:27:51.959
Michael Hiscox
Having engagement and reviewing that with providers as opposed to saying we're just going to roll out an entire new set of services, and you've got to lump it and start delivering something different. There's kind of a scale of change thing there that will be taken into account through that in the actual variation process.

0:27:53.519 --> 0:27:58.959
Michael Hiscox
So there's various things around the kind of contract and the term and that aspect there.

0:27:59.999 --> 0:28:16.199
Michael Hiscox
We had as you'll recall as part of the RFA, a key component of that RFA did focus on safeguarding and elements there that we're that we're focusing on. We had quite a bit of feedback in this space as well, but.

0:28:16.399 --> 0:28:34.159
Michael Hiscox
What we what we've made adjustments to in this space is really the ability to amend and update certain policies. We acknowledge that some of the some of the feedback came out saying that the policies that we had referred to be quite right or out were outdated or needed improvement.

0:28:35.159 --> 0:28:41.839
Michael Hiscox
So we've created the ability to update or amend those references to certain policies as and when they are required to be updated.

0:28:42.719 --> 0:29:0.199
Michael Hiscox
We've also changed some of the way that external safeguarding services are referenced in the contract, so and the obligations there on providers with the disabled people and making sure that the obligation focuses on the available services as opposed to.

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Michael Hiscox
There was a kind of stricter condition around that previously and we've also kind of just up. There are some updates going on around the exit policy and some of the work there which is referenced throughout the service specification as well. So, there's a bit of adjustment in that space.

0:29:25.439 --> 0:29:33.39
Michael Hiscox
Another piece that we had quite a bit of feedback through was around the audit space.

0:29:35.959 --> 0:29:49.839
Michael Hiscox
Following on from the previous point around safeguarding, obviously there's a new kind of reinvigorated focus on safeguarding and auditing practices following the RCOI on abuse in care.

0:29:49.919 --> 0:30:9.359
Michael Hiscox
One of the things that Catherine mentioned earlier was our new enhanced audit programme and so you'll see some amendments through the contract itself that we've amended referenced his references to certain audit types. This is really reflecting that new enhanced audit programme that is.

0:30:9.359 --> 0:30:26.799
Michael Hiscox
Will will be announced soon. As Catherine mentioned, early next year we'll be going live on this new programme. But just for some context around that, we have been engaging with a strategic audit partner. We're bringing on a new organization or bringing on an organization as a partner to.

0:30:27.79 --> 0:30:42.799
Michael Hiscox
To help us deliver audit services in a different way moving forward. So, some of the conditions here reflect that new set of services that we're going to be getting and those audit types that come through there, that's a really exciting and.

0:30:42.879 --> 0:31:0.599
Michael Hiscox
An important part for DSS because that's going to give some help us really improve how the market performs and the oversight that we have across providers as well. So as and when the time is right for us to make announcements on that, we'll make sure that you are engaged appropriately as well there because.

0:31:0.759 --> 0:31:4.839
Michael Hiscox
Residential services is obviously a key component under that programme.

0:31:6.919 --> 0:31:22.39
Michael Hiscox
Yes. So, you'll see a few definitions have changed and there's some other bits and pieces of feedback around audit types as well in that space. We've also adjusted some of the.

0:31:22.239 --> 0:31:41.679
Michael Hiscox
Reporting types and just change some of the definitions slightly around those reporting types or made that a little bit clearer in the schedules and the time frames that we expect some of those reporting, those reports to come through, we've just adjusted based on the feedback as well. So, there's a few tweaks in that space that will be that you'll want to get across.

0:31:41.759 --> 0:31:41.959
Michael Hiscox
2.

0:31:52.159 --> 0:32:8.159
Michael Hiscox
Another key part following on from the audits is around performance and improvements. So, one of the aspects of this new model is the performance monitoring.

0:32:8.599 --> 0:32:28.479
Michael Hiscox
Piece. So, although it's reasonably, it's probably reasonably familiar to start with, we did make some indications that we would potentially adjust that over time and introduce different metrics or different measures. One of the pieces of feedback that came through was to make sure we engage with providers in the process to do that. And so that's one of the.

0:32:28.479 --> 0:32:47.999
Michael Hiscox
Those areas that we've committed to engaging before we start putting certain metrics across providers, so that you'll see some changes in there. And there's also just that kind of linkage with the improvement plan process and how that would work around that kind of red, amber, green scaling is.

0:32:48.79 --> 0:33:7.439
Michael Hiscox
Where improvement plans start to come in and the effect that they start to take contractually. So that is one of the key areas for us of the contracts in terms of how we manage performance across providers and we manage and make sure that there are key ways of improving performance if it's required.

0:33:7.879 --> 0:33:27.359
Michael Hiscox
So there's a key element there around making sure how we've got that focus. I think within this kind of performance and improvement space over time, there'll be some, there'll be adjustments being made, there'll be things coming out that we'll want to see improvements against. So, although day one, they're probably not.

0:33:27.439 --> 0:33:34.919
Michael Hiscox
Majors, it's how they'll get transitioned out over the longer term, which is kind of where the kind of real improvement across the delivery will come in.

0:33:37.39 --> 0:33:46.479
Michael Hiscox
And we've just made some minor tweaks around things like transition and wind down, which will be you'll probably spot as well as you go through. You'll see that within the table, so.

0:33:53.199 --> 0:34:12.959
Michael Hiscox
So naturally we had quite a few questions come through about the funding model and that sort of thing. I'll just touch on a few different parts here. There was a fair bit of feedback in the invoice process. So, we've just updated, updated that condition to reflect the current processes that we have, what processes we have.

0:34:13.39 --> 0:34:19.399
Michael Hiscox
Moving forward. So that will be a key part that you want to just make sure you review, especially going into the end of the year.

0:34:20.639 --> 0:34:40.399
Michael Hiscox
There were some key parts around linkages to RSS and the funding model. So, this was just this was more clarifications that came through from some providers, but really just making sure that providers were across that need for the RSS to be embedded and how the funding model embeds the RSS through.

0:34:40.399 --> 0:34:55.279
Michael Hiscox
Yeah, through the contract. So that's linked into the service specification and those elements. And we also had a fair bit of feedback around extraordinary costs and when we might embed some of those, when we might utilise those conditions.

0:34:55.599 --> 0:35:10.239
Michael Hiscox
One of the things I do want to mention about extraordinary costs is this is different to exceptional rates. So exceptional rates being within the funding model itself, so that's within the schedule. This is extraordinary costs, so yeah, one off payment type examples.

0:35:10.879 --> 0:35:26.79
Michael Hiscox
We haven't scoped or it isn't. It isn't tightly scoped within the contract, the exact circumstances we would use this in because we want that flexibility and it may be that there are just certain cases, we need to kind of have conversations about where we might fund certain.

0:35:26.719 --> 0:35:45.319
Michael Hiscox
Additional or certain types of care and there might just be examples where there just need to be costs that are considered and so that would be in a very much a by agreement condition to be to be utilised, but it really provides that flexibility for that longer term piece as well.

0:35:46.719 --> 0:35:46.799
Michael Hiscox
Um.

0:35:48.879 --> 0:36:6.279
Michael Hiscox
The other part was linked to that conversation or that statement earlier on about reviewing the funding model. So, we've just made it clear about that process for review and how the funding model will be reviewed or could be reviewed. I'm just that's a key part to note as well as we as we go into this.

0:36:11.759 --> 0:36:16.479
Michael Hiscox
The next piece, this is a piece that we've.

0:36:18.639 --> 0:36:33.719
Michael Hiscox
We probably took the most feedback on I would say and it's something that we're actually quite excited about the changes that we've made in this space. So, this is around the payment during certain absences and particularly the payment following death.

0:36:33.999 --> 0:36:52.39
Michael Hiscox
In care of the conditions there, we'd used some reasonably historical conditions that we'd pulled through, and we had quite a bit of feedback in that space. So, the first piece that probably jumps out is, is the time frames piece around payment during temporary absences. This is the condition that was.

0:36:52.719 --> 0:37:8.479
Michael Hiscox
Historically called the annual leave condition, we've changed that. We've very changed it slightly to refer to the holiday condition, but that was just to sort of move it away from sort of employment type language. But one of the things we've done there is we've shifted it from a 28 day.

0:37:9.439 --> 0:37:29.279
Michael Hiscox
Allowance effectively to 42 days, so that's a clean six week period. That was really because a lot of the feedback we had was that this was creating a constraint on families and on disabled people that you know having that in there meant that they couldn't have that flexibility around the care. So, we've just increased that.

0:37:29.359 --> 0:37:47.559
Michael Hiscox
The ability there to take those absences, so things like Christmas or school holidays or elements like that, you've got that people have that flexibility in order to spend more time with families or spend time out of care. So that was a really key thing for us in terms of creating that flexibility.

0:37:47.879 --> 0:38:3.199
Michael Hiscox
In terms of the other time frames piece, we've also we had quite a bit of feedback around payment following death and the impacts that that has particularly where funding is suddenly whipped away. So, we've adjusted that time frame just to extend that out. So, there's more.

0:38:3.279 --> 0:38:18.399
Michael Hiscox
There's a greater period of certainty there for providers in those situations, just acknowledging that that does have quite a big impact on group homes and yeah, and on providers and families as well.

0:38:19.679 --> 0:38:36.999
Michael Hiscox
One of the pieces that we are that we spent quite a bit of time focusing on as well was this middle piece that we've introduced around a new clause for trial in a different arrangement. So, this is what we'd originally dubbed as trial in the community as well, so.

0:38:38.159 --> 0:38:55.239
Michael Hiscox
One of the various pieces of feedback we had was that the conditions we have didn't allow that flexibility for disabled people and their families to trial different models of care or to trial different types of care. So, what we've done within this for these contracts is.

0:38:55.599 --> 0:39:10.719
Michael Hiscox
Introduce a new model where disabled people can spend, can agree to a trial period where they could move out or move into a different type of care and still have their room secured.

0:39:11.839 --> 0:39:28.839
Michael Hiscox
So a key part of this is that for the 1st 28 days we would continue to pay providers at the full rate and then there's a mechanism there where that steps down to 80% for the following three months, which just really allows that certainty for both families.

0:39:29.199 --> 0:39:48.879
Michael Hiscox
The disabled person and providers around that funding and then so if there was a trial going on, you wanted to try something different, for example, that really creates that opportunity for people to do that, have a bit of surety around, well, if it doesn't work out, I don't have to go back in and get reassessed and find somewhere else. I know I've got a

0:39:48.959 --> 0:40:3.479
Michael Hiscox
Home to go to and there's mechanisms there where that can be extended out as well. If the trial, if you know when people are trialling this, they need to, they need a bit more time. So that's something we were pushed quite hard on internally to really think of a different model for.

0:40:4.879 --> 0:40:10.39
Michael Hiscox
Putting in place here so that we can really try and drive that benefit through for disabled people.

0:40:11.199 --> 0:40:29.239
Michael Hiscox
The key control across this is that it is agreed through the NASC process. So that's one of the key things that you'll see when you read that condition. But we're really excited and I think it we're hopeful that this will have quite a big impact in terms of those controls and those challenges that people have fed back on through this.

0:40:29.439 --> 0:40:45.399
Michael Hiscox
Through these contracts, particularly around those absences and those abilities to move in and out of care and try different things. So that's something that we're, yeah, that we're really excited to see roll out. One of the things I'll just note on that is that see this is controlled through the NASCS.

0:40:45.719 --> 0:41:5.119
Michael Hiscox
So we have to operationalize this with the masks, not necessarily anticipating that on day one, on the 1st of December, we're going to have a whole pile of these that will come through. This is something that is going to, we're going to have to take a bit of time working through how it rolls out. So, they'll probably be a few trial periods, a few test cases and then we'll be rolling this out.

0:41:5.279 --> 0:41:15.199
Michael Hiscox
Probably next year, but it's something that people will definitely be interested in, I'm sure to see and read a bit more about and something we're definitely excited about as well, you know, to roll out.

0:41:19.119 --> 0:41:33.759
Michael Hiscox
The last slide of my very thrilling tables that I'm stepping through are just a few other little areas that we've touched on. So, we've changed some of the pieces about subcontracting. So, this is really just adjusting how subcontractors are approved.

0:41:33.959 --> 0:41:53.439
Michael Hiscox
Using that panel agreement part I mentioned earlier, just some clarification around the intellectual property and the processes there for when IP would be owned by certain parties. So, we haven't changed the provision itself, but it's more that the process around that provision and how things would.

0:41:53.559 --> 0:42:9.279
Michael Hiscox
How that would be operated. We've also removed the piece around no derogatory remarks and some of the challenges that we faced in that space that some people will be familiar with, and we also made various changes throughout the.

0:42:9.399 --> 0:42:28.919
Michael Hiscox
The contract document and the service specification and schedules and things that were we had quite a lot of feedback around the way that we referenced family final advocates for disabled people and just making sure that we sort of tweaked that definition or the way that was used throughout those documents just to really create that focus that it's the disabled person.

0:42:28.959 --> 0:42:35.759
Michael Hiscox
Person's view with the support of, so you'll see lots of little changes like that crop up through the through the agreement as well.

0:42:37.359 --> 0:42:45.399
Michael Hiscox
So that's the kind of, that's the high level step through of all the changes that we've made.

0:42:46.359 --> 0:43:2.519
Michael Hiscox
I'd really encourage you to go on the website as mentioned earlier and take a look at the full table of changes. It's it really does just step through those key the clause, the summary of the of the feedback or the comments that we can't.

0:43:2.999 --> 0:43:22.919
Michael Hiscox
And the response that we've made and then you'll see the clean versions of the updated contract as well get put up on the website too. So that's all going to be there available for you to review. If when you're stepping through that you've got queries or the things that you don't that don't quite make sense, then obviously please reach out as well and we're more than happy to either talk it.

0:43:22.919 --> 0:43:27.719
Michael Hiscox
Through or provide that information to everybody if that's of benefit too.

0:43:28.439 --> 0:43:43.399
Michael Hiscox
I'm going to pass over now to Trish, who's going to talk through the next steps as to what you'll what you'll see over the next several weeks and couple of months and a bit about what's going on within the contracts and funding team as well.

0:43:43.559 --> 0:43:44.239
Michael Hiscox
Oh.

0:43:46.239 --> 0:44:3.159
Trish Davis
Kia ora. Thank you, Michael. I’m Trish Davis, I'm the director for contracts and funding. So, if we just probably go to the next slide, um, around timeframes and the next steps.

0:44:3.799 --> 0:44:23.119
Trish Davis
So in regard to this process, you should expect to receive your contract offers and improvement plans in the week closing the 10th of November. And then as many of you are aware, there were a number of contracts that were.

0:44:23.319 --> 0:44:40.439
Trish Davis
And in the same documents as your residential services. So, we have separated those out, so they will come to you separately and other contract documents during November. So, it'll be the community group home.

0:44:40.519 --> 0:44:56.439
Trish Davis
Contracts coming out and then it will be your other contracts. Contracts are to be signed by the 28th of November, and the contract start date for this panel obviously is from the 1st of December.

0:44:56.919 --> 0:45:11.279
Trish Davis
In terms of contract management, I'm the manager of a new team which is the contracts and funding team and contract managers are responsible for the first port of call and.

0:45:12.279 --> 0:45:31.199
Trish Davis
The working relationship with you. So, from 1st of December, that is the process that we'll be following. In terms of for this contract, the first payment under the new model will be on the 20th of January. So that's 20 days obviously of the month following.

0:45:31.639 --> 0:45:46.799
Trish Davis
And in terms of this panel, we've obviously just gone through the RFA process, but it reopens again from the 1st of December for new providers to apply and join as well.

0:45:47.79 --> 0:46:1.919
Trish Davis
OK. So, we go to the next slide. So, I'm excited because my team is the contracts and funding team and the roles have changed.

0:46:2.439 --> 0:46:21.959
Trish Davis
A little. So, we are responsible for engagement with you as organisations and as providers. So, we're dedicated to managing your contracts and we will be the first port of contact. So, this is different.

0:46:22.39 --> 0:46:38.519
Trish Davis
From in the past when you had a portfolio manager who often dealt with all of your queries, so it could be at down to an individual level. Contract managers are responsible for the full contract life cycle.

0:46:40.119 --> 0:46:59.39
Trish Davis
And so some of those queries may be passed on to other team members in the wider team because our focus is on making sure that your contracts are in place and that everything's working the way it should be and that we're monitoring and giving you feedback on your performance.

0:47:0.119 --> 0:47:19.879
Trish Davis
OK. We are in a process of changing as we've moved to a new structure. So, some people that you've probably had working relationships with, I'm aware that people are still contacting their former portfolio managers. So, we are from the 1st of December encouraging people to contact us through the named people that we will give to you, but also through the DSS commissioning e-mail.

0:47:39.239 --> 0:47:57.39
Trish Davis
So, the other thing I want to mention is that you will be familiar with senior managers who are in my team. So that's Christina Curd and also Doug Funnell. So, these will be familiar names to you.

0:47:57.759 --> 0:48:1.279
Trish Davis
If we move on to next slide.

0:48:3.279 --> 0:48:22.519
Trish Davis
So, support and contacting us—we are just reiterating that contract managers are responsible for the relationship with you and also during this period of change, we've asked for people and it's just on the next slide to reach out to us through this e-mail as well so that we make sure that none of your queries are lost during this time. Kia ora.

0:48:50.119 --> 0:49:9.199
Michael Hiscox
What I should have said, sorry on the on the way through that is if you do have any questions throughout the throughout any of the content then please do drop them in the chat and yeah we will, we will endeavour to try and answer them if we're able to on the fly or otherwise we.

0:48:52.719 --> 0:48:53.999
Eskedar Mulatu
Alright.

0:49:9.799 --> 0:49:20.919
Michael Hiscox
I will send answers out as well afterwards following this. So yeah, please do drop things in and we'll see. Otherwise, we can, yeah, get back to you later on.

0:49:31.639 --> 0:49:40.479
Eskedar Mulatu
Kia ora. My name's Eskedar. I'll be moderating the Q&A session for today and putting some of your questions to our presenters.

0:49:41.319 --> 0:49:43.799
Eskedar Mulatu
So our first question here. What does Day One look like? I'm a new provider--what does Day One look like?

0:50:0.839 --> 0:50:2.399
Eskedar Mulatu
Mike, try and start us up.

0:50:5.399 --> 0:50:25.239
Michael Hiscox
OK, so yeah, sure. So, Day One, obviously 1st of December, once all the contracts have been signed and people have been on boarded, day one in some ways won't look too dissimilar to how it currently is for those current providers, you know the services will still be provided. There haven't been major changes to the service spec or that that sort of thing. So, the immediate, there shouldn't be an immediate impact in that sense, but for new providers what it that it would mean from day one onwards.

0:50:44.839 --> 0:51:3.319
Michael Hiscox
We'll go through a bit of an onboarding exercise with new providers. This is just probably a welcome to DSS kind of session. We'll work through how some of the systems work, make sure that the new providers have access to the NASCS and have the right systems and processes set up in that sense as well.

0:51:3.479 --> 0:51:19.239
Michael Hiscox
And that they're able to start taking referrals through that process as and when the timing's right to do so. We kind of note that running into the Christmas period, it's a slightly funny time around this as well.

0:51:19.279 --> 0:51:35.519
Michael Hiscox
So there's a bit of a, there might be some challenges there. So, it's probably not necessarily a day one thing. We'll see loads of change. It will be a sort of slow change or slow uptake of different providers come through as well. So, we're expecting it to be kind of embedded over time as those as those new providers come on board. But for current providers, I'd anticipate there being sort of minimal change from a from a service delivery perspective. But then there's certain changes that you'll see through the pricing side. So obviously the pricing model goes live.

0:51:53.999 --> 0:52:13.599
Michael Hiscox
The way that we'll go through some of closing out the old contracts and rolling up into the new contracts, yeah, pricing or payment schedules and payment cycles and the new comment sheets and those elements, yeah, those kind of more administrative parts of things will probably feel different as you kind of roll.

0:52:13.679 --> 0:52:16.639
Michael Hiscox
Throw into the next as into this contract.

0:52:19.679 --> 0:52:30.639
Eskedar Mulatu
Thanks, Mike. Another question here. Why is there no reference to enabling good lives principles that were developed by and for disabled people?

0:52:38.399 --> 0:52:54.479
Catherine Poutasi

I can respond to that. We haven't changed the service spec at all. So, the well in in principle the service spec remains as is and the service spec does focus on enabling good lives principles and absolutely, they are still our founding principles that DSS.

0:52:54.639 --> 0:52:59.919
Catherine Poutasi
Works towards to achieve, so they are still very important to disability support services.

0:53:1.679 --> 0:53:21.479
Catherine Poutasi
And I might just add in terms of the previous comment and question for new providers, we will be assigning a contract manager to each provider and we'll be providing extra guidance and support around what it is to be a disability support service provider, things like engaging with sector OPS and Health New Zealand, what they do.

0:53:21.679 --> 0:53:35.519
Catherine Poutasi
So it'll be we'll be able to provide some guidance for new providers around what we expect from as a DSS, as a commissioner and funder, but also how we can support new providers to deliver the services.

0:53:44.159 --> 0:53:52.519
Eskedar Mulatu
Thank you, Cath. Oh, another question. I'm a new provider. Can I take on clients before I sign my contract?

0:54:0.199 --> 0:54:18.479
Michael Hiscox
The short answer to that is know that the contracts need to be signed before you'll be able to receive referrals in the system before you'll be on boarded in that sense. Yeah, so we will be issuing contracts as Trish Trish mentioned, contracts will start to be issued.

0:54:18.479 --> 0:54:35.559
Michael Hiscox
From next week, so providers will start to see those both incumbents primarily and then new providers that are joining as well. They'll start to see those contracts come through and then once those contracts are signed, that's when everything starts to go up and running in the system.

0:54:35.999 --> 0:54:36.919
Michael Hiscox
Where I'm.

0:54:38.639 --> 0:54:54.639
Michael Hiscox
Where there's incumbent providers for signing the contracts, there's a there's a whole mechanism in the background about changing contract types and scripting across the new contracts. So yeah, that's why there's been lots of that data validation work going on in the background as well, so.

0:54:54.719 --> 0:55:5.639
Michael Hiscox
Yeah, things will be happening around how we're reporting and how we're tracking people against certain contract types and where the funding's coming from and that kind of thing. So that's all happening in the background too.

0:55:8.439 --> 0:55:22.999
Michael Hiscox
More detail around that part will be in the in the next webinar. So, there's a lot of information on the band allocation tool and how that model in the global pricing tool, we'll go through sort of some refreshers on that as well within the next session that we're running, which you should receive invitations to if you haven't already in the next couple of days.

0:55:38.639 --> 0:55:52.359
Michael Hiscox
I think we were just teeing up the right times for the right speakers in that space. But yeah, we'll do that before the end of November as well, just so that you've got all that, all the information that links to how those things will work through the through the new contract.

0:55:54.639 --> 0:56:8.919
Eskedar Mulatu
Thank you. What will be the process for onboarding the new providers? We have not had a contract or relationship manager for the best part of this year. When can we expect to have clarity on our point of contact?

0:56:12.959 --> 0:56:32.399
Catherine Poutasi
I can answer that. Some of you already know that we have gone through a change process recently and we're actually actively recruiting to contract managers in our contracts and funding team. So, in the meantime, for people who are still engaged with your previous portfolio manager, you are most welcome to continue to contact them.

0:56:32.639 --> 0:56:45.839
Catherine Poutasi
We will be assigning for new providers, new contract managers as soon as we have them and we'll be approaching you directly about that and we'll be able to advise you who your contract manager is. So, we will be in touch with you as soon as we can.

0:56:53.199 --> 0:57:5.319
Eskedar Mulatu
OK, another question. It would be really helpful if you could share the new DSS operating model and who's who once that has been confirmed and established.

0:57:8.239 --> 0:57:27.719
Catherine Poutasi
Absolutely, very happy to do that. I thought I might add before we finish because looks like we only have two minutes left. We are very committed to working with everyone very closely moving forward. We're very happy to engage and talk to you about your contract and your services. That is our approach moving forward and as such we have contract managers.

0:57:27.799 --> 0:57:37.679
Catherine Poutasi
Who will be your dedicated first point of call? So, we're really looking forward to moving forward with our community group homes.

0:57:41.399 --> 0:57:43.679
Eskedar Mulatu
OK, so.

0:57:44.559 --> 0:58:0.159
Eskedar Mulatu
Thanks everyone for those great questions. That covers most of the key questions that we have. We'll make sure to capture any questions we didn't have time to address and include responses in our follow up e-mail. Ken, that's it for me. I'll hand over back to Kath to close us off.

0:58:1.839 --> 0:58:17.39
Catherine Poutasi
Thank you very much. Again, I appreciate everyone's time. And I'll close with the Karakia.

Kia whakairia te tapu
Kia wātea ai te ara
Kia turuki whakataha ai
Kia turuki whakataha ai
Haumi ē. Hui e. Tāiki ē!

Ka kite.

0:58:21.319 --> 0:58:21.879
Michael Hiscox
Kia ora. Thank you.

Transcript will be available soon. 

[Catherine] Welcome everyone to the Disability Support Services webinar about our procurement approach for Residential Support Services. Please note, we are recording this session  to share with people who are unable to attend today. Your voice and face will not be recorded but your team's avatar and name might show on screen. Please feel free to not attend today if you do not consent to this recording - we will be able to share the content with you after the session. A reminder to not disclose any personal information within the webinar Question and Answer chat, and we do anticipate having time at the end of the session for questions and answer via the chat function. I'd like to start by opening with a karakia. 

(Karakia)

My name is Catherine Poutasi. I'm the Director of Commissioning at Disability Support Services for the Ministry of Social Development. I'm also joined today by Michael Hiscox, who's our Director of Commercial, and Nila Panko who is our Procurement and Commercial Lead. I'd like to start by just running through what we will be covering in the webinar today. We'll talk briefly about the new commercial model, we'll then go through the procurement and application process, and finally we'll end with some information that you need to know. 

I just want to start by providing some context as a commissioner, funder and steward. We had seven principles that we considered when we were planning our approach. One of the principles was continuity of care, so our focus is on disabled people in residential care continuing to receive quality and safe care in their usual place of residence. The second principle was service capacity is maintained so disabled people their whānau can maintain choice and control about where they want to live. The third was transition is supported. Providers will be supported to transition to a new pricing model. The fourth was system efficiency is improved. The design of the new pricing model will contribute to stabilising the Disability Support Services by promoting efficiencies. Five was sustainable funding. The sixth principle was everything being realistically deliverable, and the seventh was  sustainable funding. I'll now hand over to Mike to take us through the commercial model.

[Mike] Cool, thanks Cath. My name is Mike Hiscox, I'm the Director Commercial for Disability Support Services, so that kind of looks across procurement and the contracts that we have in place and are managing. Moving forward, as Cath mentioned, we're going to cover this in two sections today,or two main sections. 

The first one is around the commercial model, so that really is where we're going how do we want to structure the contracts etc in the future. And then the second part will be about how we get to that, so how are we going to go about procuring that over the next several months before the contracts current contracts expire at the end of November.

So jumping straight into the commercial model part, some of you will have seen in the letters that we sent out and some of the previous coms that we've done um alongside the pricing model that we've been referring to this thing called a panel contract, and so I'll talk a little bit about what that means, and and why we're going about that sort of model.

Essentially, a panel contract is a group of providers, so in this case it would be group of residential services providers who have been approved, and have been taken through a kind of standard process and a standard set of assessments, so have proved that everybody meets a standard, and everybody's then engaged against a common set of terms and conditions that can be managed at a central level, be managed as kind of one consistent base of terms and conditions. How that looks is  I'll step through these five different boxes, but what that really means is that any provider who meets those standards can join the panel. So those standards - we'll talk to a little bit as we go through this presentation, but what it means is that we can set the standard, and then if maintain those standards over time and if providers then drop in certain areas then we have mechanisms in place there that we can manage.

The component that's called Open Panel also means that it's open for the long term so we can use this panel to engage other providers in the market where there might be gaps or where we know that there's an area that needs additional services. So we can use this panel as a mechanism to bring on other providers if needed as well. Some key parts are that it is against a common set of terms and conditions, so it's everybody or every member of the panel will be using the same contract. We have that consistency in those obligations, everybody knows that you're comparable against other people who are providing services under the panel. And as I mentioned that we intend to manage this in a central manner, so we say holistic but what we mean really is centrally so that we can make sure that everybody is being engaged in a consistent manner by DSS, but also that we can roll out improvements and changes over time as well. So that might mean that something crops up that we need to update the service schedules or a safeguarding requirement, and we can do that as a cohort of providers and against a cohort of contracts, as opposed to having to go out and agree 90 different sets of contracts. It's more managed in that central way. 

One of the other key benefits that we're looking at as well is that obviously this is community residential to start off with, based on the scope of the community group home pricing model. But over time, and as we'll get to some of the duration pieces a bit later, over time we might look to introduce other residential services as well and we can then use this panel as a base mechanism of being able to do that, so whether it's bringing in other types of service we currently have, under which are in that kind of residential category of work, or whether it's about creating other new services that might fill gaps in our service offering, it creates a foundation and a base for us to be able to do that moving forward.

If we jump on to the next slide, okay? This is a kind of very high level picture of what I've just said. This isn't a gospel picture, it's just something we've scribbled on a whiteboard a bunch of times to illustrate the same points on the previous page, but really that bottom half of the the slide is describing the panel model. So as you see treated as one group of providers, where new providers can come on board, or the number isn't a fixed number so people come on board and leave or depart the market as well, which are established by DSS we have a mechanism for bringing people in, and then that mechanism for managing off if things go don't go particularly well, and we also have mechanisms for improvements and managing the performance across that panel as well. 

What it essentially means is that if you are a member of that panel, then as we move forward, that means that NASCs will be able to refer those services, or refer send referrals to people on that panel. And so it will create that standard that if you want to be able to provide these services moving forward,  this is the mechanism that we will be using. 

 So if we jump on to the next slide, we've got a little bit of info about the structure of the contract, and what it will look like. This is reasonably comparable to how we contract at the moment, but I'll talk through this, because there is a little bit of nuance to it. This is very high level, but it's more just categorised, so that when you do see these sorts of things in the coming weeks, you'll hopefully be able to see where they slot in.  The first part is what we're calling the panel agreement, so this is essentially the piece of the contract that you'll all sign as we move through. And so this details the specifics of the individual providers that will be providing the service, and some  specifics around that. What it then does is point to all the different parts of the contract that you're signing up to, effectively what we have so that so that would be kind of comparable to an outcome agreement in today's - in the kind of current language.

What we then have is just the panel terms and conditions. Essentially this is the kind of long form contract that you'd be more used to seeing in the background, around the framework terms and conditions, and those sorts of things. This is where we spell out all the different obligations that we've got, whether it's from entry exit and how things are managed. It will point to the different schedules, for example, around pricing and and the specifications etc, but these are going to be consistent terms and conditions across all providers, it creates that just base contract. And then obviously we then have the service specifications which are being updated to a small extent at the moment, but no material changes is probably the the key message there.

So it will point to that as being part of the contract, as well as you see down that side as well, we've said those open panel terms and conditions, and the service specifications as we currently have now as well, those are the things that will be posted online. They'll be open so everybody knows that you're against the same conditions. It makes it really easy for us to maintain that as well, in the event that we need to update something if there's a law change or a policy change etc.  It makes it quite straightforward for us to be able to manage that. That's a very high level picture of what it will look like, and as we move through the process in the coming weeks,  you'll see much more detail as we spell out what those different parts of the contract are.

If we jump on to the next slide, this is the "why are we doing this ?" slide, the benefits that we're trying to achieve from a DSS perspective essentially. So I'll just step through these. One of the key benefits we're looking at is providing that that long-term commitment to the market, or to providers, and I'll talk a little bit about that on the next slide as well. But having that long-term commitment providing that certainty out to providers, but also having that ability to adapt and improve the service offering, and how we engage, is really key to what we see in the future. 

So we don't want to build something now, and then in 3 years time it's out of date. We need that ability to have that flexibility as we go through the process, or go through the engagement. Longer term, one of the other key benefits is really around that consistency and clarity across all the providers that are providing this service for us, and for disabled people, in that at the moment there are a range of different forms of contract. It's not heaps of different ones, but there are kind of some specific elements that differ depending on how long people have been providing services etc. So what this does is it really sets a base that we can have everybody against the same terms and conditions, and then kind of create that flexibility in the future that if we need to change and tweak things with the cohort of providers, we can do that with ease. 

It gives us the opportunity really to reset things as well. We're bringing out the new  pricing model, so it's really giving us that opportunity to start afresh and go, "well okay we had all those contracts before, they're under different models now, we're under this new model". It's a clear start that takes us through a bit of a process to get there, but it really resets that relationship, and helps us to embed that new pricing model and some of the other things that we're wanting to do in the broader DSS environment. 

And the other piece is that it allows us to onboard new providers against that same standard that we'll on board current providers to as well. Because as we know, in 2 years, 3 years time, there might be a need in an area that we need to step into, and we want to be able to identify providers if that's something we need to do, that we can then provide more services in that space, or a new provider comes along - we want to be able to bring them on board. We've got mechanisms in place to be able to do that, and have that choice element there really as well. So that's the benefit from our perspective. The key benefits we've got, or we're considering from the provider perspective, it's on this side really. As I mentioned, we're providing that long-term certainty to the market or to providers in this space. 

One of the key things that we've managed to achieve here is a really long-term duration of that commitment on these contracts. So starting off with a 10 and then two 5-year rights of renewal built into this panel contract really means that we can provide that certainty and that commitment to the providers that join the panel. That's a massive win from our perspective, because it means that we can signal to you that we're in this for the long haul, and it also then means that you as providers have that ability to see that long-term commitment and be able to make improvements that might happen over a period of time - whether it's investing using capital or those sorts of things. It just provides that ability to invest and make those improvements over time. And hopefully, by moving away from kind of short-term extensions, it will it create that improvement, and allow you a bit more flexibility and certainty in the way that you run your organisations. 

That's a huge win from our perspective to be able to get that commitment out there for all the providers, that clarity on how you're being engaged, so making it really clear that everybody is being engaged in the same way, being engaged against the same terms and conditions, the same processes. That's largely the same at the moment, but it's just being really transparent about those sorts of things as we move forward, and having that real clarity that we're being clear on this is how we expect to engage with this portion of the market providing services with us. 

Another key part that we want to do is provide that clear performance and reporting expectations. Obviously over time that might need to flex and adapt, so we might need to change reporting needs etc. But we can do that centrally, and work with the cohort providers in that space, but it's making it really clear that everybody's being held to that same standard. And also by putting in this new model, it makes it a lot more straightforward in terms of rolling out the new pricing model, as we talked about last week, in a kind of clear manner. Everybody's against the same contract etc, so it gives us that ability to set that date and roll the the pricing model out from that that point onwards. 

So that's that's the kind of whistle stop tour of the panel contract, and the model that we're wanting to move to. What you'll see in the kind of the next piece is how we're going to get to that, but we wanted to talk to where we want to get to first. So it's clear that we're talking about this new contract, this new model, and then we can talk about the process now as to how we'll how we'll get there. 

Just a reminder as well that if you do have questions, or you do want to know anything, feel free to chuck them into the Q&A part of the Teams call, and we'll try and answer them at the end. It's really useful if there are things that you need clarifying, or things weren't quite clear as we stepped through that. We can either try and provide that clarity, or it will help us when we provide the information in the future as well.

So in this section, I'll really step through what we're doing, or how we're going to go about procuring this new contract. What I wanted to start off with saying though is that as Cath mentioned right at the start, one of those key principles that we've got is that continuity of care. Really what that means is that we want to be able to support our providers through this process, so I just want to make it really clear that this isn't an exercise of market consolidation, or reducing suppliers in that perspective. This is about us getting to a new model and a new contractual approach, not about trying to drive any other outcomes in that space. 

So I know there'll be a bit of nervousness as we sort of step through what this phase looks like, but I just wanted to make that part really clear, as right from the outset that this is about continuity of care as we move through. We've sort of the very high level phasing and the approach that we've got. To get us to that new contract that will start on the 1st of December is that we're obviously right at the outset of the process. We're developing the documents, we're working through the approach etc, providing briefings and information sessions. What that's leading to is what we're calling a request for application process. This request for application process will start next week so on the 16th of June, and it will be open for applications to be received for a period of 6 weeks.

I will step through that in a fair bit more detail in the coming slides, so just signaling that what we'll then be doing is assessing the different applications that we receive against the standards, and we'll be undertaking a level of due diligence against that. Some of this is just the standard kind of due diligence that we need to provide now that we're within MSD, and that we've got that we'll be signing up to new contracts, so we need to go through a a kind of formal level of due diligence as good funders. Then ultimately what that leads to is awarding the contracts, and moving into that new environment which will start on the 1st of December. Our key aim is that it will be a seamless transition for those who are continuing from the 30th of November to the 1st. So it should feel reasonably seamless, but that 1st of December is really when the new pricing model comes in, and all sorts of other elements, so we've got that target with lots of these phases and pieces of work that we've got going on are aiming for  that key date. 

That's the big picture sector, and I'll kind of step through some of those in more detail in the next slides. If we jump onto the next one, so the request for application process. We were very cautious we didn't want to go out and say this is a big tender process, and a big "we're seeking proposals" etc - we're very clear that this is an application process. We want providers to go through a straightforward process in order to join this contract, and so what you'll see next week when we release it is it'll get released on the Government Electronic Tender System as a mechanism of making sure it's out there, but it will point us to the DSS website where all the documentation will be held. We'll also send out emails and there'll be information in the provider newsletter etc at the right periods there. But the information that you'll need will be available on the DSS website in order to apply to join this contract effectively. 

I'll go into what those documents look like in the next slides, but what what it looks like is a series of questions against four key areas. So these are the business requirements and service sustainability, so these are some of the key requirements that we have, quality requirements so that includes things like audits and safeguarding type requirements - we're just asking a few questions around those, and then health and safety information, security some kind of key things that we've just got to ask providers, that we want to ask providers that we're contracting with. 

So it should be a straightforward set of questions for people to be able to answer. What you'll see is the RFA includes all that information that you need to know in order to apply, including how to get in contact with us, information about the contract etc, all those sorts of things. We've got a key part there that both the incumbent providers -  so those providers on this call who currently provide services -  and any prospective providers or new providers, anybody can apply through this process but obviously we we will be prioritising and supporting incumbents going through that process. So what that might mean is if we get a whole heap of prospective providers coming through, that we might sequence some of this in a slightly different way, but the priority is to take the incumbent providers through that process. 

At the outset, one of the key things that we've got as well is to ensure that we're following a good diligent process, we have engaged an independent property auditor, so they're just really making sure that we're following good procurement practice, and that good robust process that we've set out at the outset that we've had approved through the MSD boards etc, that we are acting in a kind of fair and transparent manner throughout this process, and the way that we make decisions and engage with the market as well.

So that should provide some confidence that we've got mechanisms there to keep us on task in that space as well. If you jump to the next slide, we've got a more detailed look as to what you'll actually see in terms of what we release next week. So there'll be a document called the Request for Applications. This is essentially an instruction document. It will include information about the process, and how we'll engage through that process - what you need to do, how to seek clarification if things aren't clear,  where do you send the application, all of that kind of stuff. All the time frames piece is going to be in that document - it's basically a short instruction document as to what you need to do. 

The key part is the what we call the response form, so this is basically an application form but it includes all the stuff like all those questions are kind of mentioned. And I'll jump into on the next slide, but we have the "what's your name?"  "where do you come from?" kind of information in there, but also then spaces to answer the questions that we ask so it takes us through those different sections.

And then we've got a supporting documentation piece which is going to be where we provide the information about the contract. We talked about that model, provide all that contract information, we have things like the service specification that's been updated etc, all those sorts of elements will be in the supporting documentation to the request for applications.

If we jump to the next slide, this is basically an overview as to to what sorts of things we're going to be asking in that application process. Obviously there's the key bits, like "what's your organisation name?", "what's your point of contact?" etc, but then we move into questions really around "what's your service delivery model?" so you just describe your organisation to to a certain level of detail. 

We've then got those questions around business requirements, so this is 
"how do you manage and govern key components of your organisation?". We then have those audit type questions, and the quality service type questions, whether there's finding some audits and those sorts of things that we just need to be aware of. We got the health and safety pieces which is the mechanisms you have in place to ensure that you're providing a service that aligns with good health and safety practices, and then information security which is a big hot topic for government contracts at the moment around how we are protecting personal information. 

And then there's a bunch of stuff which will be supporting information, which should be quite straightforward to be able to provide, like financial information that we just have to do some base checks on. What we've tried to do in this - at last count I think it was it was definitely less than 20 questions - but it's about you know 18, 19 questions covering all of those areas so it's not a huge proposal document like in other parts of government. This is straightforward. You provide these sorts of information that are useful for us to be able to undertake a bit of assessment there.

Once you've provided those applications, we're going to start assessing the applications. If you provide that information early, we'll then start those assessments early so we've got some flexibility on how we go about doing that.

If you jump on to the next slide.. okay this talks through really the key areas that we're going to be assessing against, and so it's those same four areas. We're trying to be really easy, like really straightforward in the way that we ask the information, and then what we take through and assess. So we'll be considering those four different areas, making sure that we've got the right information there from providers. But then the other part is really that we might look to undertake some other due diligence - whether it's reference checks or some checks of some of the audit findings, and those sorts of things. That just gives us that opportunity to have other conversations with you if we need to, or if we just need to check some other things as well.

In terms of what that means in terms of the assessing the applications, is there's really three tiers of result that we'll show on the next slide, which is essentially we use the red / amber / green rating. 

If you want to jump to the next slide - so basically if everything comes through and it's it's all good and you're considered to be a green rating, then really it might be just some base due diligence and then we can progress to contract award.  We're anticipating that being both incumbent and prospective providers will go through that sort of process. 

If through the assessment process we identify some areas - maybe areas of weakness or areas where we think there are some things that need improving, what we didn't want to do is just kind of go "it's a binary, you're in or out" - what we've done is create this mechanism that means we can still award a contract to providers, but it might be contingent on an improvement plan, which we will jointly develop with providers that we identify these challenges or just areas of improvement with. And what that really means is that when we sign up to the contracts, we just know that there's some things that we're either keeping an eye on, or we want to kind of progress. And these could be across a whole range of different areas, but the example that always comes to mind is if a if a safeguarding risk is identified, then we might need to have some improvement in terms of how do we make sure there are practices being improved in that space. It just gives us that mechanism to ensure that continuity of care, but make sure that we are able to improve the performance if needed. 

What we've said there is that we only really see incumbent providers going through that process in the first instance. So this is part of that piece I mentioned around supporting the current providers to be able to join this new contract is that we really want to create that mechanism that we can take everybody forward. And then there's obviously people that apply that if there's just either major risks, or we aren't able to contract with them, that's the third option there, that we won't progress. What that may mean is that we provide some feedback to people. What this might be is that a new provider turns up isn't quite ready to start, but we provide some feedback, and then they come and apply again later, and they may have improved etc so that's how we'll be assessing people. 

Moving providers through that process in terms of the time frames, so a bit more of a detailed jump through those time frames. What we're doing right now is obviously the information sessions, the briefing sessions. We did the one on Friday which was about the pricing model, and the one today, so this is just signaling our intentions and where we're going here. Then as I mentioned on the 16th, so next week, we will be releasing the request for application process. That's where you'll be able to see where all these questions are, and what you need to do to be able to apply.

What we then wanted to do was have another session, probably similar to this, another webinar where there's the opportunity to ask questions where we can step through those questions in a bit more detail, and we can provide that nuance if needed, or provide that clarity if things have been asked already. So we're we're currently planning that at the moment, but it will be that likely that week of the 30th of June. So that be that first week of July effectively. We'll send out invites for that at the same time as the RFA, so that you know how to join, but it will be a similar forum to this I expect.

And then we've put the deadline as a 6 weeks later, so we've got the ability to receive all the proposals, so we can then take everybody through the process and start awarding those contracts for later in the year. So we'll be doing that due diligence, that assessment, as soon as we start to receive the proposals effectively. So if you get in on Week One, then great, we'll have a look, but we'll be doing that through the month following the receipt of all the applications. 

We'll come out and notify people if we need more information, if we need to develop plans etc, and then we'll start awarding the contracts ready to live from from the end of October is our current intention. So that means that there's lots of run-in really before that 1st of December. You should know ahead of that where things are at, but we do acknowledge at the same time as that that there's not heaps of time to get there so it's going to be quite a rapid process for us to get through this as well.

So this is more the summary couple of slides. I know there's there's quite a lot of information in there, and if there are questions, then please do drop them into the chat and we'll see whether we can answer them, or whether it's just things we need to provide in the process. But really onto the next slide please Cath. 

The key messages are that obviously we're moving to this new open panel model - that's from the 1st of December so ensuring that continuity of care is key for us through that process. But  that panel is going to enable us to manage and improve these services over time. There's a huge long-term commitment within that panel, so initially 10 years but up to 20 year period, so that really signals that we're in this for the long haul with providers, so we see this as a really positive model as we move into it. 

In order to get there, there's those middle three points which are around the application process that I've just gone through, so all providers will need to go through that application process. In order to to award contracts in the future, we will need to undertake some form of assessment and due diligence of all those providers, so this application process is really that mechanism that's allowing us as good funders to be able to do that. 

But really I want to acknowledge that we will support providers as we go through that process, so if there are things that aren't clear when they come out, or if you need support, you want to clarify things, there will be methods for doing that. And we're committed to making sure that people have the information they need in order to go through this process. And then the other key thing - it's just that email address if you have anything please reach out. It's much better to fire off a question and let us know that there's either things that we haven't considered, or things that we're not being clear on. It's really helpful if you can just fire those things in, and if we have to set up a chat or a conversation, we're more than happy to do that as well, as we kind of step through this process. 

So I know that that's quite a lot of information, and a bit of a whistle stop tour. Feel free to chuck questions in - I've seen a few come in, not that I've read them - they just pop up on the side, but we can jump in now and answer any of the questions that might be coming through. We also have on on the line Sarah and Phil, who, if there are some specific technical questions from that side, or things that are bubbling away from last week as well, they might be able to provide some clarity there too. And I can see that people have been answering some of these questions as we go through as well. 

[Sarah] There's a question in here Mike, around an estimated amount of time that it might take for a provider to put together an application, and I think you kind of spoke to that a little bit around - it's not a full kind of request for proposal, we've tried to make it as - I don't know if simple is the right word, but as simple as possible so that providers can put this together more easily than a full RFP process usually would be.

[Mike] yeah absolutely. It's quite hard - it's a bit of a "how long's a piece of string?" in some ways, but we have limited the number of questions, we've tried not to ask any questions to things that we already have the information for - you know, those sorts of things, because we don't want to cause unnecessary work here. We've really provided that 6 week period because we do acknowledge that there are some internal processes that a lot of organisations need to go through as well, and in terms of releasing this sort of information or application, so it provides that time to to get your own sign-offs etc as well in there. But it's quite hard to say an exact amount of time without just saying "it won't take too long". 

But yeah, we expect that some providers will be able to submit applications quite quickly in that first week, because the questions shouldn't be seeking essay type responses. They should be quite short and putting quite clear limits on the level of information we need. And if you are ready to submit it early, then please feel free to. We will start to assess them as we go through that process.

[Sarah] Another question in here. Will the RFA be against NZBN? That is, if a provider operates across the country do they apply as a single entity or could they choose to regionalise/disagregate their RFA? 

[Mike] We've set it up in a way that it can be done just once so by a single provider, and our intention there was to be able to just contract in that method as well. So you would be awarded a single contract, and then in line with the pricing model, there's regional bands and those sorts of things. There's the ability to have different prices and those elements across those regions. However, if there are kind of key splits in organisations -  if there's some sort of legal structure that you need to have these contracts in four different forms for example, or various different forms, then yeah, we're open to that in terms of the way that we place the contract. At that back end is probably more where that comes into it. We would encourage just having single applications though. It's much more straightforward, and if there's an issue there around how we award those contracts, or how we place those contracts with different legal entities or something at the back end, we can step through that, definitely.

[Sarah] There's another one (question). Are you anticipating incumbents will be in the red zone? I think you spoke to that as well.

[Mike] Yeah, I hope not. We don't anticipate people being in that space, it's more just if the process identifies something major, then there is that opportunity for that to happen. What we would rather have is that incumbents are in that improvement zone -well  obviously our preference would be that everybody gets through in the green zone - but if we need to, it's most likely going to be in that improvement zone if there are challenges that are found. 

[Sarah] Will organisations still have portfolio managers as per the current process?

[Mike] So it's a yes, there's no change to that at the moment. So this is more that contractual change in the background. We are aware that there's a lot of providers, and there's a lot of people that it takes to manage the interactions, so yeah, that structure will still be in place. There may just be some additional things where there's a central point of contact, or a way of supporting those portfolio managers in the background. But yeah, we anticipate that it will be a kind of similar process to now.

[Sara] "Will providers need to be health certified?" We're not proposing any changes to that current certification, I don't think, so we're not proposing any changes to the act which requires certification.

[Mike] That's correct. You see the current position there will continue as we move through. Some of the things that we are looking at doing though, and this is broader and was in some of the Budget announcements, is around how how we operate that audit program from a DSS perspective into the future. There's some scoping work going on at the moment in terms of what is the right model for DSS, so although the health cert piece will definitely continue, there may be additional pieces or additional things we can do in order to to fill the gaps between where we have the health cert programme now, and where we know there's gaps in what we can see effectively. But all that information will be will be coming out soon, I believe.

[Sarah] There's another question in here - "will there be one contract for providing services to people with physical disabilities and intellectual disabilities?" I think we briefly covered this in this last session, but essentially the pricing model will be common, so there'll be one pricing model for all of those services, but we still intend to differentiate the contracts between community residential services for physical disability and intellectual disability.

[Sarah] Sorry, a lot of questions coming in now, I'm just scrolling down to see which ones we haven't answered.

"How will you assess quality of new entrants?" is one of the questions there, means new providers potentially.

[Mike] We have some standard questions which you'll be seeing through the RFA process. What we also anticipate in that piece where we said there would be further due diligence and potentially further things being required is that if there's a complete unknown provider to us - we've never engaged with them before -  the likelihood that we would undertake additional due diligence is quite high, and that may include things like whether we go out and visit sites, or whether we undertake early or short form audits, or those sorts of things just because we would have to be really comfortable bringing new providers in that we had gone through some of those checks. If they're providers that provide services to other agencies, for example, we would engage with those other government agencies and talk to them about service offering, and standards and all those sorts of elements, so it's quite likely that there would be additional due diligence in that space needed, just because we wouldn't necessarily have that historical relationship there.

[Sarah] There's another question in here: "Will we have to submit an RFA for both ID and PD contracts?"  So I think the answer is you'd only have to submit one, but indicate which, if you were essentially applying for both, or either of those contracts.

[Mike] Yeah that's correct, so we would only want to receive one application there, just to keep it straightforward. In those upfront questions, we do ask about the the service model that you have, so you'll be able to describe and talk to how that split would work. That's the key part - we're trying to keep it as straightforward as possible, so we don't want to duplicate work in that sense

[Sara] Will residential rehabilitation be included in the new contract process? At this stage, this is just relating to the Community Group Home, or sorry Community Residential Services only, so things like residential rehabilitation, aged residential care, supported living - those types of kind of other contracts, choice and community living won't be included in this process. 

[Mike] Yeah that's right. The key part there in my mind is that although this part of the process is around the community residential aspect, as I mentioned through those panel contract slides, it does give us that opportunity that if it would make sense to, we can introduce other services under the under the panel agreement, so some of those other services that Sarah went through, there might be logic in including that as a separate service specification and engaging providers so that we've got that consistency in terms and conditions across a whole cohort of providers. But that isn't something that we're doing from Day One, and there'll be a lot of engagement if we were to be expanding that or bringing in new services as well.

[Sarah] There's another question here - "do the people we support have any say if providers will remain with a contract?" Service continuity is one of key principles that we have through this process, plus there's some consideration in there for things like complaints and other sort of feedback that we'll consider as mechanisms.

[Mike] Yeah and again, the same piece around that further due diligence -  if a risk was identified, or we knew there was a risk in that space, then we may choose to engage and do some checks in that environment. But this is really about how do we engage with yourselves as providers, so how do we set up that right funding and contract mechanism in that sense.

[Sarah] "How do we know which contracts are covered? It's not clear from your descriptions today." So the the contracts that are covered in this new contracting approach will be community residential support services for people with intellectual disabilities, and physical disabilities only. 

[Mike] So this is a key focus around residential services, um and the services that Sarah mentioned but we do acknowledge that there are a range of services delivered under some contracts, and so individual providers might have we might have to have one-on-one conversations just to work through where things might be grouped up in different contracts in certain ways. 

We are aware that there are people are different situations in terms of how people are currently contracted to deliver services, and so one of the things we're doing there is identifying what is the right thing to contract under this new model, and what would we do under  a different model moving forward. So we're working through some of that in the background at the moment from our perspective, but it will absolutely require conversations with providers, and that I expect will happen probably once the application process is done so we kind of know where we're at with some of these things.

Then how do we move forward from that as well, because equally there's continuity of care challenges and other service lines that we've got too, so we need to be cognizant of all of that work too.  So where there are other service lines, like say supported living, that are currently part of your community residential contract, we'll work with you on a what that means for your organisation, and how we'll manage that contracting post 1 December. 

There's another question here -  "if a provider has recently been awarded an MSD contract, like community participation, would we still need to go through this assurance process?"

The short answer is yes, because we are likely asking slightly different things. We obviously do have the connections with broader MSD in that space, so if there are things like references or checks that we need to do, we can talk to those parts of the wider organisation, particularly if it's like if you're providing an example and you want us to see that example in practice. Or you know those sorts of things, then yeah we would definitely talk to other parts of the business in that space. But yeah because the for this new contract the risks that we're managing are slightly different, so we would need to take you through a specific set of due diligence questions in that sense.

I just wanted to jump in and just say in terms of hearing from the voice of the people, part of our requirements in the RFA will be around quality and checking to see how providers actually reflect the person's voice in terms of how they deliver a service, so that's part of our quality assessment in the RFA application.

There's another question in here - "how will we get a sense of improved financial viability before we commit to the RFA?" 

So providers will very shortly over the coming week or so receive a letter on the estimated kind of overall financial implications of moving to the new pricing model, and as we discussed at the last session, we're also putting together a bit of an information packet which talks through the assumptions in the costs in the pricing model, so that should also be coming out shortly for you to get a better understanding of what the pricing is going to look like going forward with the new pricing model

Yeah, just building on that, just to be clear that what we'll be sending out in short order is about the estimated difference. There's obviously some... as we mentioned last week... some validation work that we need to do to 100% confirm what those things are moving forward. So there'll be another stream of work in that space that we're doing, but yeah you you'll get a very clear sense based on the estimates that we've got as to what the impact will be moving forward, and in addition to that, Al mentioned last week that there will be an annual review of pricing embedded into our process, so that's part of our process moving forward.

Excellent, there's just one more question - "how will that pricing model be shared i.e email or website?"

I think we're anticipating that most of this information will be available on our website but if it's information specific to you as a provider, obviously that'll be shared confidentially with you.

Yeah, so each provider will be receiving a a letter with the estimated impact of the model, and then we will be building out the information that we are sharing publicly around what the actual model is, and those things similar to what we shared last week but yeah there'll be more information available on the website

Really excellent. My notifications appear to have stopped pinging into in the bottom corner so um pass back to Cath for any closing remarks if you'd like to make any Cath?
 
[Cath] Just so you can see that we are strengthening our commissioning approach as a steward, commissioner and funder, and part of that commissioning approach is looking at the mechanisms we have to do better and improve our services, improve the quality of services, and ensure value for money moving forward. 

This is one of those mechanisms and I'd just like to thank you very much for your time today, and if you have any other questions, as Mike said please feel free to contact us at dss_commissioning@msd.govt.nz. We are here to support you through this process and transition into using the Community Group Home Pricing Model.

 I'll close with a karakia, thank you.

[Cath] Alright, tēnā koutou katoa, talofa lava.

Welcome to the Disability Support Services information session on the Community Group Home Pricing Model.

Please note we're recording the session for providers who are unable to attend the webinar. We note that there was a read AI admitted to the meeting. If everyone's happy we won't use that function.

We are transcribing the session, so that will be available to you. I'd like to start by acknowledging it's Samoan Language Week, and the theme this week is 'a malu lou sā. Folau i lagimā' which means a well-grounded self is a successful self.

I'll hand over to Sarah to take us through some housekeeping.

[Sarah Morgan] Morena tatou. I can see a lot of familiar names in the list but for those of you I haven't met, I'm Sarah Morgan, I'm a Principal Adviser in the operations team at DSS. Just given the number of people joining today, we're running today's session as a webinar so we can make sure we cover off all the material.

So it'll largely be an opportunity for us to present information to you. Acknowledging it might feel a bit like one-way traffic but we'll have lots more engagement opportunities to work with you directly on what this means for your own organisations.

We'll be using the Q&A function today rather than the chat. You should be able to find it at the top of your screen um it's called Q&A. If you just jump in there feel free to pop questions in as we go and we'll try to answer everything as we can. If there's anything we can't get to, or it's going to be covered in another session, we'll make sure that we get those recorded and come back to you.

I think that's all for housekeeping and I will hand over to you Al.

[Alastair Hill] Just making sure I get my camera and my mic in order. My name is Al Hill, I'm the Programme Director for the DSS taskforce. So it's really great to be here today, and to be able to share with you what we've been working on for the past nine months.

I'm going to run through a bit of backgrounds for the model and then talk a little bit about what's involved in it, how we got to here, the sort of testing and some of the feedback that we got.

And then the team's going to take you through more of the details which I think is where the questions will come out later on down the line, but I'll stick around for the whole call as well and if anyone's got any particular questions I will be very happy to pick those up with you or to pick up a conversation separately if that's useful as well.

So yes, we're here to talk about the - as we're calling it the residential pricing model - the community group homes pricing model.

I start by saying because we've had some feedback around language and the - the thing that we're calling it this is a technical in the background piece of machinery. So it's a descriptive title rather than necessarily a thing that we'll be out talking to the community about.

So I preface this by saying that what we're talking about today is kind of the nuts and bolts of how we make this thing work in a big machine.

When we get to the implementation side of things, we'll be talking more over the coming months about information for the community and forward- facing frontline facing tools and supports as well. So just bear that in mind as we work through this.

So in terms of the sort of background to this, you'll all be familiar by now, I'm sure, with the Independent Review of Disability Support Services that was released last year, and which the government agreed to the findings and recommendations.

Recommendation Two was that there was a requirement on us to undertake an urgent contract and pricing review of residential funding, and that meant that in the meantime the residential funding was frozen at the 2024 levels.

The main reason for that was that despite residential residents being relatively stable, the cost was increasing quite rapidly and it was.. it's already one of the largest areas of expenditure for Disability Support Services. And so it was really trying to understand what was driving that cost increase, so that we could try and better account for it in the pricing model which hasn't been updated since 2016. But also try to make sure that we could better forecast and understand where that was likely to go into the future.

So that was about giving greater assurance to government but also to providers and disabled people alike.

So the aim of the review was a simpler pricing system. It had been built up over time and ended up, as I'm sure you were all aware, with a predominant cost or revenue stream and then all of these other tack-ons along the side, and so it was becoming complex to manage.

We also know that it was completely out of date, right? So it wasn't credible, and there were all sorts of things that were being done to try and make the pricing model work.

We also needed to have greater transparency between costs and the prices paid, which again is that complexity issue. The individual rates that were being paid - and I think there were some thousands of them - were down to individual contract negotiations, and often reflected what providers and NASCs believed was required in order to make good on the services required, rather than necessarily  what any kind of assessment tool or anything was suggesting that should be paid.

That also meant that we had massive inconsistency, so there was no way for us to have a look at it and go "a package here should equal broadly a package here" and account for variables or differences that made any sense. So having a level of consistency that tied needs assessment and allocation was really important for us.

We also wanted obviously to remove the residential funding cap. So in order to be able to provide for that, we had to have a model that met all of those requirements to give the government confidence and return back to a single budget for NASCs, so that there is proper flexibility and choice um both on the NASC and providers part, but also from the disabled person's perspective, and being able to choose a home that makes the most sense for them.

We know that over the past nine months - nearly a year - the funding cap has created instances where people are being put into community packages.

For example, where residential was probably a more sensible choice or a desirable choice but that wasn't able to be made to work.

So this is a good thing in that that that cap will be removed and NASCs and EGL sites will be able to operate under a single budget in the coming year.

In terms of the rapid review itself, the initial pricing model... we've moved to a select number of rates That was a choice for us in terms of how many rates we had applied.

As it says there, we've reduced from over 2,000. We could have gone to any number of regions. We could have gone to any number of bands within that. That kind of made sense for us.

But the modeling showed us that as we've set out there, six prices in each region - 24 rates nationally - made the most sense.

Within that we could capture 90 percent of the residents that are currently within care, and we think that will be the case ongoing. We'll talk a little bit more about the exceptions to that, because there is 5 percent at the bottom end and 5 percent at the top end where there are a number of reasonable exceptions to the model - where it didn't make sense for us to keep trying to create bands for them.

As I mentioned, this part of the simplicity aspect is consolidating multiple revenue streams. And so rather than providers having to manage all of these add-ons and ad hoc payments, and trying to back engineer them into where the residual or the primary price that they've come from, we've been able to roll in the pay equity advanced interim payments for settled pay equity claims, sleepover funding as well into a into a single price.

We'll also talk in a little bit about the RSS component and how we've treated that as well. So rather than having multiple different ways of cutting that we're going to have one going forward.

Again, another component we'll talk about is this does change the way that the price reflects costs? So there is an averaging component to this - costs previous or prices previously weren't actually cost based. As I said, they'd often been reverse engineered or, you know, a function of making allocation tools work.

Now we've been able to build this from the ground up and so it does reflect costs that we have selected based on external reference points. And again, that's another point that I'll talk to. We'll go through what all those components are, and we're also working to create a public resource that shows what those external reference points are as well, so that you can understand them and build those into your own operating and business models.

And the last thing obviously, the increasing transparency and consistency. We want to make sure that you have clarity about what it is that we're paying for, and the prices that we set. So again, that's why it's really important for us to to go through all the different components here. And then the next step will be showing how all those prices or individual price points add together.

I'll talk very briefly just about the testing exercise. This is the first time we've taken providers through the detail, but we did select last year a small number of providers looking at small, medium, large, to try and understand the differences and interest and incentives, and to try and make sure that we were testing assumptions accurately.

We'll just flick over to the next slide... oh too far I think... Provide a feedback slide. Oh no sorry apologies! This is the pricing model testing slide!

So you can see there the pricing assumptions that were tested across three areas. So again, we did not take anyone in advance through a detailed run through of how the model would apply to their own costs or their own residents. We were looking at some of the questions, or as it says, the assumptions around different aspects to try and make sure that we were not creating inequities or, you know, creating a model that only worked for say large providers.

That is one of the aspects when you start looking at averaging it does tend towards a model that has greater scale. But we think we've come up with a model here that works on for small and indeed very small providers as well.

We've got providers that have - at the top end hundreds of residents, and at the bottom end one or one or two. So we think this works across the board for all of those.

Happy to take some questions at a later point perhaps on the assumptions or on the the feedback as well. But I'll run through the feedback very quickly just so you can get a sense of what was said, and then we can kick into a bit more of the detail about it.

The really positive thing I think through all of this is that we've had really good support, and I would say a big thank you to those of you that have participated in the assumption testing.

But also those of you that have feedback on the detail that's been provided so far, it's been really useful to try and calibrate our way through all of this,  and generally I'm hopeful. But I believe that this is a positive thing for the system, and that we've been able to knock this off for the first time since 2016.

And we've got now a model that can be maintained and updated. I think Kath will talk a bit later about how we've built in a regular review cycle to make sure that we maintain credibility with the external prices or reference points for costs, but also be able to provide regular advice to government on the decisions that they might make through the budget process.

Given we're going to release the slides and the transcript later, I don't propose that I go through any of the details there, but you can see some of the some of the points that were fed back, and we've obviously fed that into the the model itself.

That feedback and the assumptions that we tested were all taken through Cabinet as well, so they informed the the Cabinet-level advice and not just our operational decisions as well.

I'm going to pause there and we'll hand back to Cath to take us through the next points.

[Cath] Thanks Al. So what's the purpose of the new pricing model?

It's really about a simpler pricing system. A simpler pricing system as Al mentioned, particularly around a fair and reasonable cost. So the refreshed pricing system is based on a bottom-up build for a fair and reasonable cost of delivering residential care and community group homes, making the system fairer for disabled people, providers and DSS.

DSS is looking to pay fair prices or funding levels to providers that cover these reasonable costs. As Al said, DSS will pay a provider an average price that should cover the reasonable costs of providing care, but that is not the same as an individual's cost.

Some key points about the community group home pricing model: The refresh pricing model means that there will be one tool that supports nationally consistent residential pricing.

The price DSS pays for care is informed by, but different from, the costs incurred by providers. So prices and funding levels reflect costs on average. As I've mentioned before,

Disabled people in residential care should not notice any changes. The supports provided today will still be available tomorrow.

We expect care standards will remain the same.

We want to be very clear that no provider will receive less funding in the 25/26 financial year through the implementation of the new pricing model.

Please note, there will be some people, as Al mentioned, with exceptional needs or circumstances that require an individual rate. So individual rates will now be an exception. This will still require a discretionary funding approach but that's very important.

We will support providers through the transition to maintain continuity of care and service capacity.

I'll now hand over to Phil who's going to take us through some of the key definitions. Thanks Phil!

[Phil Berghan-Whyman] Thanks Kath. Kia ora everyone, I'm Phil Berghan Whyman, I'm a Principal Adviser in the DSS Taskforce.

So just in the next few slides, we'll just run through some of the key definitions and sort of technical details of what we've done.

So, a few things to cover off to start with. We just want to differentiate between cost and price, right?

Cost is obviously what's incurred by yourselves as providers when you're delivering services for people.

Price is what DSS pays to you for delivering the care.

We've developed a pricing model, so that's essentially what we're going to use to inform and update and set the prices that DSS will pay for the care that you're delivering.

Those prices, they're set out in banded rates, so there's six possible prices in each region. And as at the bottom, there's four different regions. So, Northern, Midland, Central and Southern, which means that as Al said earlier, for about 90 percent of the people, they'll be receiving one of those 24 rates.

And if you're just delivering in one region, essentially most of your people will be receiving one of the six prices in your region.

And in order to allocate those on an ongoing basis, the NASCs will use a tool which is called the band allocation tool or the BAT tool.

The BAT tool is different from the overall pricing model. It's a tool that will allow them to work through a process of determining which of the rates applies to that individual.

All right, so just to work through then, this is a slide which is presenting on what's sort of included in the model, and how that process has worked.

So the model we find works well for about 90 percent of the people who are currently in community residential care. So there's about six and a half thousand odd people.

There are some people who, if you look at the rates across the whole spectrum, have very low rates, and sometimes that's for particular reasons.

So you might have someone who's a got a relatively low level of need and actually half of their costs are being paid by another party, say Health New Zealand, mental health.

On the other end of things, you have people who have very high rates because their needs are very different from anybody else.

And so what we found was with those people in that sort of top 5 percent, because their situation was so different, they didn't fit well into a a sort of a banded rate approach because you'd have sort of very wide differences between the rates, and the sort of unders and overs don't work so well.

But for most people the approach does work well.

And so as we apply that, what we expect then is that the care standards will be maintained, and also there's been a commitment that no provider will be fiscally worse off in the 25/26 financial year.

Now talking to the components you can see on the slide there, so what we've built is firstly a Global Pricing Tool.

So that tool is really about looking at all of the different price combinations that could possibly exist if we look at a range of inputs such as accommodation costs, care costs, the cost of delivering the business itself,  so overheads and such.

And in the next slide, we'll actually talk a lot more about what sort of assumptions we made, and what's in those.

What we did once we had that big list of several thousand different possible prices is we then took the cohort of people who are currently in residential care, and we made assumptions about those people and matched them as best we could to what rate we thought applied to them.

We then took that, and we put it across a curve, and using that third component we essentially looked at where there were natural breaks, and what bands seem to fall out of the existing funding and rates that were already in play.

And that was part of what led us to the decision that there would be six rates and four regions and so on.

Could I have the next slide please?

Okay, so, if you were to look today under the hood of one of the transparent pricing models, or one of the individual rate calculators, what you would see is something that looks quite a bit like the what's in that diagram on the screen right now.

It would have part of, or some of those core cost components.

As Al said earlier though, the existing TPMs or Individual Rate calculators are out of date. Although there's been price uplifts over the years, the structure of those models hasn't been reviewed, and a number of the assumptions are just no longer as up to date as they should be.

The models are also just different. So, some have a component, others don't have a component, and so on.

And then of course the underlying contracted rates for people who aren't on an Individual Rate, those are often quite historical just with price inflation over time.

So, this approach moves all of the pricing to having a sort of consistent basis to work from. So, you'll see looking through there that we've covered off across all of these things like staffing, client related expenses, core housing, maintenance, provider overheads.

Also, what we're doing through this model is we're trying to provide a sort of indication of what fair and reasonable costs would look like, so that those can inform pricing.

The intention of this is to not tell you how much you should spend on food, or laundry, or fit out, or whatever.

The intention there is that you run your business, but this is to give us an indication of what fair and reasonable is, so that we can set fair and reasonable prices.

Right, could I have the next one please?

So, then the next question is how do we match the current cohort of, you know, more than 6,000 people, to these rates without requiring that every person is reassessed by a NASC, which is not a really practical option.

So, what we've done is we've derived a number of assumptions about each of the people who are currently in residential care. Things based on such as address and so on, about what region they're in, what we think the capacity of the house is... Things like rural or urban so on.

And we take that component, and we use the model to see what do we think is the approximate cost of that aspect of the sort of accommodation piece of the rate.

Then we take essentially the rest of what's being paid for that individual, including an assortment of things like the advanced interim payments for pay equity and apportionment of sleepover costs, and that sort of thing, and also an assumption about the client contributions being received from the RSS. [23:27]

We assume that the remainder of that is largely related to sort of variable costs like the care costs, and we use that to match to the closest ratio that would make sense, in order to get an idea of where on the price points someone would sit.

And then from the many price points that are available, each of those then clusters into one of the bands and therefore to the appropriate level in the appropriate region.

Okay, just have the next slide please.

Okay, and so this is sort of giving a visualisation then of that same process.

So as you see, there's each region has six prices. The prices are not dissimilar, but they are different, and that reflects the fact that some of the underlying costs – of say accommodation and housing for example - are higher in some regions on average than they are in other regions.

90 percent of people will match to these prices. For the people who don't match to these prices, there will be the extraordinary rate process, which we'll tell you more about in the future.

All right, um is there another slide for me? There we go...there's a couple. Okay, so I'll just work through a couple of things on this slide and next.

So at the moment there's several different revenue streams that come to you as providers, in addition to the day rates that you're paid. And I'm just going to touch on how those are affected by this.

So the advanced interim payments are the support worker pay equity top-ups for hours of labour. So those will be rolled into the rates that are paid for the service.

The cost model includes the support worker labour costs at the full pay equity labor rates. So we've built that into the rates.

The same also with the sleepover costs.

So the base assumptions in the model are is that every house has a sleepover, and for the purposes of estimating costs we've actually assumed that the people delivering the sleepovers are paid the normal labour rates, rather than the minimum wage which is the assumption at the moment.

So that will mean that there's no longer a requirement for a sleepover top-up payment, and also that there's effectively no real difference um between say a wakeover cost at wage rate and a sleepover cost at minimum wage, because they're now all assumed to be at the labour rate.

The day activity contribution - just for clarity that's the top-up payment of about $31 a day for people who are usually 65 plus and who don't go to day services or vocational services.

So that cost is now covered as part of the model, because the model assumes that although there is a period in the middle of the day which has had  a lower level of activity, there's no longer an assumption that essentially everybody leaves for 6 hours every day, which was sort of one of the underlying assumptions in in the previous pricing.

There's no change to GST treatment or anything like that.

Lastly, the client contribution treatment does change for some regions or some providers. So at the moment we have two different treatments in play

- client contribution exclusive where the rate is simply the rate and the contribution paid by a client through the RSS scheme is additional to that, and so you get both.

We're moving to client contribution inclusive. So what that means is that the rate that's set by us assumes that is the full amount that's being paid as the price. So if the price was say $400 per day, what it assumes is that what DSS will pay is $400, less the client contribution amount.

If the client has a benefit and that's paying say $50 a day towards the care, then DSS would pay the difference $350.

If the client's not eligible for a benefit and therefore has no RSS payment, we would pay the full $400. 

And we think this is quite a positive change because if you had the exclusive arrangements prior, then if the person had no eligibility for a benefit you basically didn't receive any funding to cover off costs from them.

All right, could I have the next slide?

Okay so last couple of things from me.

Just to be clear, there's no impact from this work on facility based respite costs. And also just to give clarity, the day activity contribution cost changes as per the previous slide, but there's no impact on day services or the MSD funded vocational services. So those are still separate contracts. They're still separately allocated supports.

That's me, thank you.

[Rachael Burt] Um kia ora koutou everyone. Nice to see many familiar names online, but for those of you that I don't know, I'm Rachael Burt. I'm the Group Manager of Operations and Enabling Good Lives for Disability Support Services.

I'm just going to take you through a little bit of a recap of what the previous presenters have already taken you through, but just really what does this mean for you. What does the new pricing model mean for you as providers?

So the new model is based on fair and reasonable costs of delivering residential support. This is so providers can have more confidence in the pricing tools.

As you know, the current tools have not been substantively updated in many years.

There will also be a clearer link between prices paid and the services being delivered, which is a positive step forward.

This will also give us a chance to reset and strengthen the commercial and contractual relationship between you as providers and Disability Support Services.

You as providers will have more flexibility to tailor support to people you support from within your overall residential funding, rather than rates being linked to a specific individual.

And because the costs have been re-baselined there will now be greater financial certainty and consistency for everyone involved.

So our approach to the transition to the new pricing model is guided by a set of core principles.

First: continuity continuity of care is key.

People who are supported in residential care will continue to receive safe, high quality support in homes they are familiar with.

We're also focused on maintaining service capacity so disabled people and their whānau can keep making choices about where and how they live.

We will ensure you as providers will be supported to transition to the new model, and the new pricing model is designed to improve efficiency and avoid adding any new complexity, which will help to stabilise the wider disability support system.

It also needs to be affordable and practical to roll out.

And finally, by simplifying the pricing structure we're aiming for a system that's fairer, more consistent and transparent.

The model will allow to be ready to support future improvements without locking us into one way of doing things.

Also the Minister of Disability Issues has committed that no provider will be financially worse off in the coming financial year with the implementation of the new pricing model.

We will continue to work with you as providers on what this means for your organisation.

And you will be aware that current residential contracts expire on the 30th of November 2025.

Disability Support Services will be issuing new contracts which will reflect the new pricing model.

We will be providing more information about the new procurement approach in the session on the 10th of June which you should already have an invite for. This session will also be recorded for those of you that are unable to make it.

If you have any further questions between now and then I'd really encourage you to contact your Portfolio manager.

And again, I just want to encourage you to join the meeting if you're able to on the 10th of June where you'll be able to find out more information including our procurement approach and panel approach.

Now I'm going to hand over to Sarah Morgan who is going to lead some of our Question and Answer sessions from what you've posted in the question and answer chat. Thank you.

[Sarah] Okay. I'm just going to go back down here and see what questions we haven't answered yet.

There's a few questions around "I didn't see the cost of compliance reflected in the tool" and also a question around a lot of reference to cost. Where is the provider margin built in? I'm going to call Phil - is that something that you could speak to because I cannot?

[Phil] Yeah, I'm happy to. So we considered building an overt margin into the model and we decided that strategically that wouldn't be a great approach - not least because overt margins like that are often the first place that will be looked to if there's savings required in the future.

So what we've done instead is we've tried to make reasonably generous assumptions about the costs.

So for example, the food costs don't assume you know 2-minute noodles and so on, it assumes a reasonable sort of household food level.

So we've made generous assumptions and we believe that leads to there being a reasonable margin within those rates without there needing to be an overt assumption.

[Sarah] Thanks. And I think you may have answered this one full already but how are vacancies reflected in the tool? Might be of interest to people.

[Phil] Sure. There's essentially a vacancy margin that's been built into the rates. So um if there are vacancies for a a reasonable period of time, then that should be able to be managed within a sort of overs and unders of the rates that you're receiving.

If you had very long-term vacancies over a period then you might want to start considering whether that's the best way to use the housing stock.

[Sarah] Got another question in here. When will providers be able to see “under the hood” As Al indicated? Al do you know any kind of expected time frame around when we might be able to provide some more information that we discussed earlier?

[Al] Yeah like within a couple of weeks. So we've got all the price components, I really just need my team to pull together a little resource that makes sense. So, we'll have that out to you ASAP in, you know, days or weeks not months.

[Sarah] Cool.

"So is it correct to assume that a separate tool for the individual rate, and therefore what are the time frames and process around that?" So that's probably a good place to start is the band allocation tool is kind of still in development from the 1st of July. You won't see any changes until kind of new contracts are in place in on the 1st of December. So that the band allocation tool and then what happens with individual rates is still in development. Don't have an exact time frame on that, but that that's that's being developed as we go.

"Any information about how providers can support and assist with the banding tool?" 

There will be some kind of testing phases, but I think that's all still kind of in finalisation stages of what the exactly the process is going to look like.

"What assumptions have been made in terms of people in a home eg: the old model always assumed four people which was not sustainable for many people?" Phil,  do you want to talk about talk to the assumptions around house size etc?

[Phil]: Sure, so the model has a a range of different assumptions. So it has different assumptions that range from a house that essentially has the capacity to support a single person through, you know 2, 3, 4, 5 plus people in a house.

There's also assumptions that relate to both the size of the house, like it may be a three-bedroom house, but also the capacity of the house to support people. So it might be that three person house can support two people because the other room is required for staffing and sleepovers and other sorts of stuff. So it has a has a lot more ability to manage different situations than the previous models.

[Sarah] And there's a few questions in here around payments until 1st of December. So yeah, you'll continue to receive the current funding that you do both through daily rates, and things like pay equity and sleepover payments until the current contracts end on the 30th of November.

And we're just working through finalising... you should expect some letters in the coming days or week, I assume, around how we're going to manage transition to that model for the period 1 July to 30 November, and that will be kind of specific to your organisations.

We're just flicking through these now to see what else...

[Al] Sarah, there's a couple of comments in there related to the transition and payments. I just thought it might be worth highlighting a couple of points around that and then I'll hand over others to get into more of the technical detail.

In developing the model and then understanding what the implications are for each of the individual providers. There are 89 providers that are delivering services, and as I said that we've sort of grouped those from very small, small medium, large, very large to try and make sure that we understood the implications of the model across all those different sizes and the makeup of the residents and the homes that you run.

For the 89 providers, under the new model, I think from memory - someone will correct me if I'm wrong - we've got 71 providers who will see a material uplift in the in the amount that we will pay, based on what we understand from the current resident mix. And I think about five providers are sort of net zero, so there are there are a small number - about eight - that receive a reduction, and we've spoken to those providers, and are working through within what that looks like over the coming year.

As Cath or Sarah said earlier, the minister's directed that no one receives any less funding in the current year. So that's what the rates indicate, but we'll make sure that we make good on um that cost equalisation for those providers.

For the rest it does provide a material uplift, which I think to Phil's point shows that the assumptions that have gone into the model, the assumptions that have gone into each of the individual cost components, and where we've priced those, indicate that it does create an uplift.

On the transition point, so we've done an assessment which we need to update for the latest possible data, but on the assessment that was done at the time, the indication as I said is that 71 providers get an uplift for those providers, because the model doesn't come into place in terms of the actual rate structure, the contracts reflecting those and the systems being able to match people through the band allocation tool and onto those rates until the 1st of December, we're looking at a transition repayment structure.

So rather than backdating which we could have done, we could have waited until the whole thing lit up, up and down the country, and then tried to make backdated payments, we want to make good on the on the prices as we best understand them.

So we'll be working with providers to make an upfront payment for those first five months basically, as best we've assessed it. So we'll be in touch, as Sarah said, with with each of you to run you through what that looks like, and how that payment will be made.

And that means that in the meantime, the prices that we're paying the additional pieces like the sleepover rates and all the rest of it can continue as is. And we just we make good on the difference. Hopefully that makes sense.

[Sarah] Uh and I guess just kind of summarising a couple of these questions in here, I think I can cover them off with one answer, is that essentially the current processes for either new people entering residential care, or having reviews done on current funding where people's needs have changed - that will continue with the current processes until 30 November.

So keep engaging with the local NASCs or EGL sites and they'll continue using current tools and rates to review until the new kind of "system" is administrable as of the 1st of December.

Um yeah so it's kind of business as usual until then.

[Cath] Sarah are you just happy for me to jump in?

[Sarah] Of course.

[Cath] Great. just circling back to something that Al mentioned earlier, we do have an annual review of costs embedded into our commissioning process and approach moving forward to inform our funding decisions.

So that's an annual review of costs using the pricing model of course um that I just wanted to explain. Thanks.

[Sarah] There's a question in here around how is a person living alone with one to one support handled.

I think Phil kind of touched on that a bit, is that the pricing model and bands do and the band allocation tool will account for things like house size and capacity. So if that capacity of that house regardless of the bedrooms is for one person because of their support needs, the allocation tool will shift towards that, or allow for that to be accounted for in the allocation to the rate

[Phil] Yep that that's correct. And just also, if there are situations where a person is living alone with very high support needs, it is possible that that's the sort of situation where an extraordinary rate might be necessary. Depending on how that relates, to the level six rate and so on. So the tool will ultimately tell us whether one of the banded rates is appropriate, or direct as to whether an extraordinary rates required.

[Sarah] There's a question in here when can providers expect to find out what their new funding will be. I think like we've said, we've done an initial kind of estimation exercise,  so that will be covered in at a high level kind of percentage in dollars wise in the letters that will come out to you soon. But we need to do some more validation prior to the actual translation closer to the time, closer to 1 December. And further validation exercise to test some of our assumptions on that. Does anyone from DSS on the call know when a time frame of when we might be able to get that kind of information out to providers?

[Cath] I anticipate that that will be in the next one to two weeks.

[Sarah] The letters, yeah. But I mean the the more final versions of people's... more final versions of the impacts would be in the later months, once we've done the validation?

[Phil] Yes that that's right. So there there's various pieces of information where in doing the development work we made assumptions, so now before we finalise the mapping of people, for example, to rates, and the finalisation of exactly what those rates are, we want to validate and check a lot of the information, so that we can be sure for example that say where we've assumed a house is a three-bedroom house that it's not in fact a five- bedroomed room house or similar vice versa. And so once we're able to validate that information and a number of other things with you, then what we'll do is we will finalise the rates, or finalised the matching so that process will happen simultaneously.

[Sarah] There's a question here around will the service specifications be reviewed to take account of changes in client need? At this stage through the implementation of the pricing model, we're not proposing any significant changes to kind of service requirements or the service specifications at this point in time.

There's another question in here around are NASCs and EGL sites now allowed to refer to residential care? And I think Al touched on that because we're now implementing the new pricing model in this financial year, the residential funding hold will be lifted from 1 July. Essentially that means that NASCs will have more flexibility within their overall funding to to allocate between residential and community based supports.

[Al] Yeah, a couple of points of clarification in there. There was never a restriction on NASCs being able to refer. The funding freeze related to the funding that the NASCs had available to place people.. to coordinate services for people, and so they've had to manage within that. They still have to manage within an overall budget, but they've already had their budgets for the coming year communicated, including the increased funding through Budget 2025.

Um a couple of points there, just for interest, because I think it's been missed through some of the media commentary. Budget 25 provided a billion dollars over the funding period, so $250 million a year.

Again, I think that's a real vote of confidence in the services being provided, but also in this pricing model that's given the government confidence and assurance to be able to release the funding freeze, and provide new funding into the system.

The $250 million is broadly broken down in $60 million for this model, and some some other residential services, but the vast majority of that is for the implementation of this pricing model. What that does is it enables us to shift existing residents onto the new pricing bands, cover the transition costs and pay the new bands right through the rest of the year.

The remaining money - so $190 million per year - provides for increased volume composition, all those kinds of things, right? So we know that more people are coming into services. It enables the NASCs to use that money to coordinate services, and whether that be residential or in the community. The vast vast majority of that $190 million has gone out to NASCs and EGL sites. There's some contracts that we coordinate centrally, so there is some funding for that but I think the figures are about $144 million of that has gone out into NASCs.

And as Sarah said they'll only have one budget to manage too, one central budget, so they'll be able to work out what the best mix of services are for individuals and place people accordingly.

And that's baseline funding as well. The $60 million for residential, the way that we're managing that is through the transition payments to start with. So again, we'll talk to providers about what those individual transition payments for the period 1 July to 30 November are. We'll make those payments directly.

From 1 December, they'll be rolled out through the banded rate structure via  the NASC reassessment process. So essentially all of that money is going out through into the the regional allocations, but we're just holding it centrally for now while we work through the implementation of the pricing model.

There's a couple other questions I've noticed in the Q&A. "So does the lift of the freeze also mean people can shift from NASC residential funding into EGL in demonstration regions?"

Again, there was no restriction on that movement previously, other than people being able to manage within their within their budgets. There was a guideline - part of the guidelines - that were written around interim transfers for residential. The principle there was largely that the the funding... in simple terms the funding followed the person and in setting the new NASC and EGL budgets we've accounted for those um those formalised transfers that will continue as well.

So the the new guidelines are being updated, and will be communicated very soon if they haven't already. There was a question about the banded rates being reviewed annually.

So the pricing model and the components within it will be reviewed, and then based on that we'll review the rates.

So there is a process for that but it's not an automatic x + y equals z. We'll need to refer to those external sources again to have a look at what's changed, take into account things like CPI and wage inflation and whatever else. What we want to avoid - I mean this is kind of an obvious example, but the reason why we retain the ability to review and then make decisions separately, part of that is the government budget process.

And also part of that is consideration of, for example, what happens in times where you've got negative growth. We don't necessarily want to be in a situation where either the rates just automatically ratchet, or where you've got an automatic process that means they go up and then down and suddenly you're having to cut costs because of that. So there will be an annual review process, but there is a separate decision-making point then and that will link into the government budget process as well.

"Are the people in residential care already in their new bands or does this happen closer to  1st December?"

We have assessed what we think people would be assessed at on the bands for those already in care, so we'll do a sort of broad translation .That's what will drive those transitional payments that we'll make to you, so we've made some assumptions around that. We'll make a payment on that basis or we'll be covering those providers who are assessed... the very small number, the eight who have been assessed at a at reduction from 1 December. People will be moved on to the new bands formally, and anyone that goes through an assessment new into the into the service, or a reassessment, will be put onto onto those.

Bands - I'm just checking to see if there's anything else I can answer quickly in there.

[Sarah] There's one but probably will be for Phil. "What are the support staff wage rates that have been used? Is it based on the previous pay equity levels or will they be entitled to a pay rise?"

[Phil] So a couple of things in answering that. So this the last part of the question - "Will they be entitled to a pay rise?" DSS doesn't set the pay rates for support workers. They're employed by you, and you have that relationship. Obviously appreciating that there are various processes but we don't intend to tell you what to pay your staff.

Secondly, the assumptions we've made in the model for support workers.

We started from the support worker pay equity rates - we included the increases over the years and also the sort of semi increase that was agreed in the tripartite negotiations in 2024. So that agreed sort of a pseudo uplift on those rates, that wasn't part of the legislation. So we've included those, and as with most of the components, we've then tried to bring the rates up to date as well. So the rates are fully in line with the last support worker pay equity agreement.

Oh sorry - they they also include assumptions about ongoing costs as well, which we've tried to make as accurate as we could.

[Sarah] Phil, do you want to stay on because I think I can answer this but you might be able to supplement. "For those with changing need or risk within a group whare setting, pre and post funding freeze or pricing freeze, and require extra staffing support eg. one to one, has this been included into the price average or will NASCs allow for flexi funding or short-term additional support?"

So I think that kind of talks to a little bit... some of the increased flexibility with the pricing model, in we'll provide a price for each person that you're supporting, that reflects an average cost. You'll have more flexibility within this model to work within your overall funding pool, so I guess that allows you to be a bit more responsive to changes in short-term changes in support needs for people. So rather than some people potentially will be paid at a higher rate, because it's based on averages.

You can speak to this better than I can Phil. Averages some will be higher, some will be lower and you'll be able to manage flexibly within that.

[Phil] Exactly. So what we how we see this is that rather than assuming that each person is receiving a discrete pool of money that in theory is to only be used for them, when in practice we know that you're in fact delivering care within a pool of funding, this makes a bit more overt that assumption.

So each individual will be assessed, and they'll be allocated a rate which relates to their level of need, and the setting that they'll be living in. You'll receive a total amount of funding from across all of those people, and then our expectation is that you'll deliver services that relate to the people's needs within the specifications, and the other expectations, and that you'll be able to use the unders and overs between people to deliver appropriate care.

[Cath] Okay, thank you very much everyone, I'm just conscious of time. We appreciate you being available for this information session. We do have another information session on the 10th of June around procurement, and we look forward to talking to you then. I'd like to just advise you if you have any other questions, please email us on this email address - dss_commissioning@msd.govt.nz. I'll now close with a karakia.

[Sarah] Can can I just quickly say as well for any of the questions that we haven't been able to cover in the chat yet, we'll make sure to come back to you with answers.

[Cath] (Karakia) Great. Thank you very much for your time.