Individual Support Service Scheduling Changes
Posted on June 28th, 2022
Here at CatholicCare, we are proud to provide you with the important care services that you have come to rely on. We provide these services to you through our valuable workforce, and we place high importance on ensuring that the working conditions that we provide to our workforce are of the best within our industry.
All CatholicCare Central Queensland staff that are responsible for your service provision are employed under the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services (SCHADS) Award. The SCHADS Award sets the minimum Australian employment standards for workers in home care and is one of the most complex modern awards in the current employment landscape.
This year, the Australian Fair Work Commission completed its 4 yearly review of the SCHADS Award, and as a result of that review, the Fair Work Commission has announced significant award changes that will be in effect from 1 July 2022. These award changes will affect the way in which organisations like ours, can schedule your services.
The Fair Work Commission’s award changes are designed to provide greater certainty for employees within our industry. With chronic understaffing a significant challenge affecting all care industry providers, we welcome widespread change that looks to help us retain the quality workers that we have, and to attract new workers where we can.
…our team have worked hard to create a new service scheduling process that implements the Fair Work Commission’s required changes while still meeting your important care needs and expectations.
While these changes are positive for our industry as a whole, they will mean that you will see substantial changes to the way that we must schedule and deliver your care services. We assure you that our team have worked hard to create a new service scheduling process that implements the Fair Work Commission’s required changes while still meeting your important care needs and expectations. We have made many of these changes in line with the valuable feedback provided by you, our clients.
From 1 July, we will transition all CatholicCare individual support services, such as domestic assistance, personal care and social support, to be scheduled by a local person. This will mean that there will be local people employed within your local area to schedule and coordinate your care services.
We trust that this move to localised service scheduling will provide you with an even greater client experience, as you will have a dedicated, local person to contact and coordinate your services from within your local office. This person will be known as your dedicated Service Coordinator, and we look forward to introducing you to them soon.
Service Coordinators
Your Service Coordinator will be the person who helps you to adjust to the incoming service scheduling and delivery changes. These changes are ones that we must implement to ensure that we are compliant with the Fair Work Commission’s update to the SCHADS Award.
We have included a summary of the changes that will affect you.
We understand that change can be difficult to adjust to sometimes, so please remember that we are here to help. We will soon be hosting an information session in your area where you will be more than welcome to ask us any questions that you may have.
We thank you for your valued understanding and support while we work to implement the Fair Work Commission’s outlined changes with our new localised service scheduling.
| Award Change | What this means for us | What this means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction of new requirements for managing broken shifts | We must ensure that client services are scheduled so that our workers can deliver them back-to-back, so as no breaks or ‘gaps’ exist (excluding meal breaks) within the worker’s day. | Services are no longer able to be scheduled at specific times of the day. As of 1 July, your services will transition to be scheduled for completion within a committed 2-hour service window. Your Service Coordinator will work with you to find a service window that best meets your needs.
Example: A domestic assistance service is no longer able to be scheduled for a specific 9 am start time. Instead, the service will be scheduled to start any time within the 2-hour service window of 8 am to 10 am. Time-critical services, such as those for medical appointments, will need to be discussed with a Service Coordinator on a case-by-case basis. |
| Reduction of notice period for client cancellations | We must provide our workers with 7 days’ notice for any cancelled services. In instances where we do not provide a full 7 days’ notice, we must pay the worker in full for the non-delivered service or provide a make-up shift. | Services cancelled at your request with less than 4 days’ notice to us will incur a full-service charge applied to your account.
Example: A weekly personal care service is cancelled by a client the day before delivery. This cancellation will incur a full-service charge due to short notice. |
| New rules for minimum shift engagement | We must engage our workers for no less than 2 hours of continuous work each day. | Shorter services requested to be delivered at non-peak times, such as on weekends or in the evenings, may be impacted.
Example: A 30-minute service requested for delivery on a Saturday morning is flexibly scheduled so that it can be completed immediately following an existing 2-hour service booking. This will allow our worker to complete the 30-minute service as requested, but still meet the minimum 2-hours of continuous work. |
