ILC Grants Strategies for Success
We're starting right on time and we're recording this one hour and fifteen minute
presentation.
So if you have any technical problems, you'll be able to access the full details and everything
we do a little bit later.
Evie is our moderator, Hi Evie.
Good morning!
She will answer some questions as you go, as you type them in.
Others we will take online but we're going to miss a stack of questions because we're
got over 220 people online and we know we've got loads of questions.
So we'll try to answer the most typical and the most common of them.
Today is in two parts, it's both an information session and also about strategy.
The really important thing to emphasize from our point of view is that we're consultants,
working with all available information.
We're not the National Disability Insurance Agency, we're not the decision makers.
What we've done is look through a stack of documentation, we've got years of history
dating back to before the NDIS was created, understanding what the ILC is meant to be
doing but we're still guessing, still doing our best possible guess work.
So, that's our session for today.
Evie.
So you have one option for asking questions today and that's on your control panel on
the right hand side of your screen.
If you type in questions there I'll try to answer some of them as we go in the control
panel, and also throw some to Roland live to answer as we go.
Thanks,
So, back to basics.
The NDIA, National Disability Insurance Agency, describe two parts of the National Disability
Insurance Scheme.
The one we hear so much about is plans, where there is over $20 billion being spent on the
National Disability Insurance Scheme.
But there is also another program, which is around $700 - $682 million, which is the ILC
and Local Area Coordination.
And that's the bit we're talking about today.
I was tempted to put the numbers out of $20000 million is what $20 billion looks like and
$682 million is a lot smaller number in comparison.
But instead of that we have put the mouse and the elephant that the very very very fast
majority of the money is going into plans, and a smaller amount is going into ILC and
LAC.
And we're talking about ILC today but we also need to understand LAC.
The background to the ILC, it is basically meant to be doing all the things that individualized
funding, NDIS plans cannot do.
Where the market doesn't work basically.
So always in all the drivers of the NDIS we're looking at reducing the lifetime cost disability.
That's a key driver of the scheme.
And we can do that through connecting people with disabilities to community and mainstream
supports, so they're not as reliant on the scheme.
We can build their capacities so they're not reliant on the scheme.
And we can promote collaboration with mainstream services to create greater inclusion so they're
not as reliant on the scheme.
So basically, we come back to doing the things that the NDIS plans cannot do to support people
to be more connected, have capacity and for organizations and services and communities
to collaborate.
So we need to understand that when we're framing our applications for ILC grants.
Again with the elephant and mouse analogy, it is such a small scheme compared to the
NDIS.
Even the scheme itself has had local area coordination taken out of it.
LACs and ECEI access partners, that's early childhood, took the lion share of that funding
that was to assist where the market cannot do what it needs to do.
So $550 million has gone into the Partners in Community Program, which is not the ILC.
And it funds areas that look a lot like ILC, and we'll try and tease it out a bit as
we go through the day.
What's been left is $132 million for ILC grants, both national and jurisdictional.
And it's funded in an overall umbrella service, sometimes sees different language.
THE CICD program or the Community Inclusion and Capacity Development program, is the ILC
grants program.
Different to access partners, different to LAC, different to ECEI but important that
we understand the overlap.
So the funding for ILC was originally $200 million for capacity building and $550 for
LAC.
LAC was meant to do a lot of the coordinating, connecting, community capacity building work
but they also got added in at very much the eleventh hour for planning function.
We've written a lot about this, we've written one article called A Serious Imbalance
in the NDIS, another one called ILC Knee Capping NDIS.
Both of those articles are available on our website and really give you the background
to saying that local area coordination is not able to do the sorts of community capacity
building functions it was originally intended to do and everyone hoped it would do.
So we're really quite hoping that the current review that the Productivity Commission has
been commissioned to do of the NDIS, will also say we need to spend more on the ILC,
it's just not going to able to fulfill it's really important functions.
And if it doesn't fulfill its really important functions, what happens is a whole lot more
people need a whole lot more services in the NDIS.
So Productivity Commission, I hope lots of you will make the effort to tell them the
ILC is massively underfunded.
A lot of people agree, including the outgoing Chair of the Board, Bruce Bonyhady, who wrote
in his outgoing lesson to Minister Porter, that one of the key foundations of which the
NDIS is being built is weak.
This is strong language for Bruce.
Basically it is not enough money.
But is also means for you, who are interested in applying for it, the competition will be
intense.
And when we say that, we didn't expect the level of interest we've had both in the
Webinar and the Canberra forum we ran last week.
It has been one of the most popular things we've ever done.
I suspect they're going to thousands of applications for what ILC funding and I suspect
it's going to take them longer to get through it then anyone could quite imagine so it will
be interesting to see where they get to.
So back to basics, let's understand what the grants are this time around.
And one thing is almost for sure is that this time around will be different to next time
around and this is the first time they've done it so things are going to be a little
be experimental I imagine.
In this first funding round they've allocating $13.1 million for National Readiness grants
and we'll go into the detail in two activity areas And $3 million for 4 activity areas,
the ACT.
Application packs and FAQs are available at www.communitygrants.gov.au site but be careful
because there's some contradictory information.
The FAQs on that site are not particularly useful and have in fact taken a couple of
people down some rabbit holes they needed not to go down.
The FAQs be careful of, be careful of the application packs, sometimes there's conflicting
information and you get told to read the most current information.
So always check the FAQs, they're really good.
The FAQs on the NDIA website, not the FAQs on the community grants website.
Sorry for this complexity.
We didn't create it, it's just there.
So there are four ILC activity areas.
This is the big overarching thing we need to understand.
One is Community awareness and capacity building; one is Capacity building for mainstream services.
So they're the big mother ship sort of things, trying to change the ways our community's
operate, the way our main stream services operate.
There's Individual capacity building, which is as it sounds, and Information, Linkages
and Referrals.
So each of those has funding streams in the current ILC Grants range.
And lets look at what they are.
The National Readiness Grants is only going to fund; we'll go back to the previous slide,
the first two of those areas.
Now they're in different orders in the way the documentation is presented, this is our
ordering of the ILC activity areas but it matches their latest ordering, the ILC activity
areas.
So nationally it's all about community awareness and mainstream capacity building.
And the more I look at that, the more confused I become about what the difference is between
those two things.
They're highly similar, and later on when we start talking about outcomes, the NDIA
is also saying the outcomes over those two areas have a lot of similarities.
So people who are applying will be able to see that they're able to look at different
outcomes from each of those areas when talking about what they're applying for and what
their outcomes are going to be in the National Readiness Grants.
So National Readiness Grants, only two areas, Community Awareness and Capacity Building
and Mainstream capacity building.
Where as the ACT jurisdictional grants, do all four areas that Toy just spoke about,
plus individual capacity building, plus information, linkages and referrals.
So four areas for the Jurisdictional Grants.
The Jurisdictional Grants are based in the ACT, which means your grant needs to be in
the ACT, it doesn't necessarily need to be for the whole of the ACT but it does need
to be located in the ACT.
It could be for the whole of ACT but as long it's part of, smaller than or the same size
as the ACT, that's the Jurisdictional Grants.
We've seen some of the documentation and the application form has 40 coverage areas.
We can't make sense of that and you can't find the 40 coverage areas and a lot of us
have looked, maybe some people have but I don't think you can.
I think that's a legacy, an artifact of something else.
So unless we hear different, your coverage area is simply the area that you want to cover.
But when you hit the pop down menu, you're going to have to up in ACT as your coverage
area.
We've picked out some highlights and all of this is highlights in a way, about the
difference between the Jurisdictional and the National.
One of the most important things I'm seeing in the Jurisdictional is that the antipodes
are meeting local needs and have a broader geographic reach.
So that's a bit of a catch, it's not just about meeting the need in Barton or Deakin,
it's also when you meet that need saying, Wow we could do more than just this area with
this program.
So if I was assessing the ILC grants, and I'm not, I would be looking for everything
I fund to have application elsewhere.
Because basically they don't have enough money, so if you have a good idea somewhere
I would want it to be a good idea for Brisbane, I'd want it to bee a good idea for outback
NT, I'd want ideas to have a broader geographic reach.
And I think that's what they're saying there.
One of the small catches in the Jurisdictional Grants too is the second bullet point, is
that insuring individual capacity building activities are focused on people who do not
have an NDIS plan.
So that's some of the first funding we've seen that is specifically focused on people
who do not have an NDIS plan.
So that's the Jurisdictional, a couple of interesting points, there's lots more in
the detail.
At the National level the points I've picked out are reducing duplication of effort, opportunity
to scale or transfer, models of practice, so that's the same stuff.
They really want ideas that can take people national.
Do you have a question Evie?
Can you clarify if the Jurisdictional Grants are currently available in the ACT?
Will they also be available in other states?
Yes they will, I will go through the details of when they will be available in other states.
And we've just seen that there's actually going to be two rounds in the ACT, which we
didn't expect.
So we'll come to those in a tick, thanks Evie.
The next bit I wanted to highlight about the National Granting, is it's for people who
do or do not have an NDIS plan.
So it's got a broader coverage than the Individual capacity building activities.
Remembering, there's four sets of activities, one of them is individual capacity building
that is only being funded in the Jurisdictional grant in the ACT and will only be for people
who do not have NDIS plan.
The National Grants are for people who do or do not have an NDIS plan.
So some important differences between those two.
Now the number of applications, this is really important to just get on top of.
It's simple but you need to understand it.
You can't submit the same application under multiple activity areas.
So going back to our activity areas, don't put in an application for individual capacity
building and also put in the same application for community awareness if you're doing
a Jurisdictional.
You can only put in one application and you have to pick the area that you feel it fits
best.
So that's it.
One application for one activity area, but you can put in two different ideas for one
activity area.
So in individual capacity building, you could put in two applications but over $10,000,
a second part of that slide, only one application per activity area.
Nationally you can put in up to 2 applications per activity area.
So if you were going to do National Grants, you could do 2 activity areas, 2 applications
per, you can do up to 4 applications.
This is if you were doing the ACT under $10K, you could do up to 8 applications.
So understanding the number of applications but only one per activity area.
Let's look at our timelines, so the most important one and that is that the Grant closes
on March the 8th, I think at 2pm.
So that's the deadline that you're going to have to meet, you still have a little bit
of time but not loads.
By April/May they will be advising applicants of outcomes, they will have processed their
way through a mountain of work.
And then from July, the funding comes out.
This goes to the question that was asked before, and I only found this in the FAQs, very recently,
that there are now two rounds in the ACT.
The current one and they're going to announce another one for the second half of 2017.
So that's breaking news for those of you who didn't know about it.
There's a second round coming out in the ACT Jurisdictional Grants, I struggled with
that, in the second half of 2017.
South Australia and New South Wales will roll out on the 1st of July 2018 and the also rans,
Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania and the Northern Territory from 2019.
What worries me for Tassy, Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory is you're meant
to come up with genius ideas in 2019 that have good national reach and coverage and
they're great ideas.
By that time we will have had 2 years of other peoples ideas guzumping our states to come
up with ideas that are great.
So it's going to be difficult by the time the funding comes around to be original and
creative, I suppose on the positive side, we will be able to build on other people's
experiences.
But finding National at that stage will be quite tricky.
WA has also just been announced and you can get the details at www.tenders.wa.gov.au but
basically in the applications, there are going to small bucks.
Which is unusual, available through expression of interest, with 3 priorities; Information
and Advice, Assisting people to participate in NDIS planning and building capacity to
self-manage.
So WA is always doing it's own thing.
I really want skate through this because we've known these focus areas for at least 18 months.
They're really important at the same time.
The areas they're focused on are Specialist or Expert Delivery, activities that provide
skills such as diagnostic, specific expertise or expertise in particular models of support
and then a race through these.
Cohort focused, the ATSI, the CALD groups, the particular activities for particular cohorts.
Multi-regional stuff that gets across a bunch of areas doing a bunch of things that's
not based on location, I think they're going to be very interested in those sorts of answers
because it's a national scheme.
Remote and Rural.
Bruce Bonyhady also in his letter to Minister Porter said Remote and Rural is one of the
areas that is missing out the most in the NDIS and people are going to have to find
some solutions.
So we're hoping to see some ILC remote and rural, it's hard to imagine a lot of that
coming through ACT Jurisdictional but certainly the National Readiness grants.
I'd be looking for some remote and rural solutions.
Delivery by People with Disability for People with Disability and that speaks for itself.
User-led organizations are one of the five focus areas.
So that's our focus areas.
Yep, a question Evie?
We have some questions.
What is the maximum amount of money that can be applied for?
Is there any guidance on how much money you can apply for under the national grants?
All the information that I have seen, and I'm reading it, is that there is no cap.
They haven't specified a max and we're just guessing what sort of things and levels
are going to be funded.
I guess there is a max in that it's $13 million.
If they're silly enough to fund one organization, the most you'll get in this round is $13
million.
But I bet a lot of money that that isn't going to happen.
Do you understand the reasoning behind why ACT has been allocated first ILC round and
why they are having two rounds?
They've held money back so there's a lot more, there's about $30 million available
this year for ILC funding.
So we know there's more money then the $13 million they've announced.
ACT perhaps because it's been the full roll out right from the start.
So ACT was an unusual trial site in that it wasn't a trial.
They rolled it out from day one, full roll out.
So I suppose that gives them an opportunity to work with an area that has a full roll
out outcome.
Keep going?
So the things they won't fund and this gets really tricky.
Work that duplicates the role of LAC and ECEI Partners, and I'm going to do a separate
slide about that and talk to that because a lot of LAC and a lot of ECEI looks a lot
like goals of ILC.
So I'd be quite worried and I will be quite worried in putting in applications about how
we're going define the difference between what we're doing and what they won't fund
in LAC and ECEI.
So it's important to have a look at what they do.
They won't fund policy advice, they wont fund core funding, so they won't fund organizations
to do the things that they need to do in order to exist.
They won't fund activities that belong in an NDIS fund like the sector development fund.
And again if you read the sector development fund, humungous overlap with ILC funding.
They won't fund mainstream services to do the things that mainstream services are meant
to do with people with disabilities.
For instance, they won't fund education to make reasonable adjustments for students
with disabilities.
Every document now they tell us they won't fund advocacy, individual and systemic.
Which is tragic and a major problem and a lot of the organizations that are interested
in ILC funding are advocacy organizations that feel they're going to be put out of
business by this national scheme.
The other side point I wanted to make is the National Disability Insurance Scheme is National.
So much of the way our disability system has grown up, including our advocacy and including
lots of ILC like work, has grown up at a state level.
We've grown up as very much as disability state based systems, multiple systems, This
national system is going to run over the top of state based systems.
And a lot of funding for state based activities is going to disappear, unless it is refunding
by Jurisdictional funding.
So there's a significant worry that a lot of state based organizations think Epilepsy,
Autism, Cerebral Palsy and the list goes on and on.
That have both national and state based associations.
What's going to happen to those state based associations unless they can find significant
opportunities in this limited ILC funding basket.
National changes aren't the way we operate.
Go ahead Evie
We have a question here relating to advocacy.
Someone from an Advocacy organization is saying they've been approached to work with groups
of people with disability and or mental illness to develop them a self and peer advocates.
Would this be likely to be funded under the capacity build?
I can never say likely to be funded but you would imagine that that activity is one that
fits the sorts of things they're after.
You would hope in some of the planning if you can be clever with plans that you can
get it in there as well.
Peer work is something that the agency is very very keen on.
Right from day one they've said they want to support peer work.
The last thing is support for people aged over 65, will they support carers for people
with disability or aged over 65?
They just don't want to get into what is the aged care system.
They're very clear on that, they just don't want to be funding into the aged care system
but certainly some of their money and their FAQs have said this, we'll be available
to support a group of people which will include people who are over aged 65.
So that's what they won't fund, now let's take a look a bit more a look at work that
duplicates the stated role of LAC and ECEI partners.
And I would still like to refer you back to the article I wrote, called Knee capping the
NDIS, ILC Knee capping the NDIS.
Because LAC was meant to do a lot of this work but then they've been given the role
of planning.
You can't duplicate the role that they're not doing.
They're so busy planning they're not doing their community development function, so you
can't being told not to duplicate a role that they're not doing.
Is this still making sense Evie?
Yep.
It's a bit abbreviated but it's there in the article if you want to track it down.
So this is the work that they're meant to be doing, connecting people who have plans
into mainstream services and community activities, assisting people who do not have a plan to
connect into mainstream services and community activities and making communities more accessible
and inclusive for people with disability which happens to be the whole focus of the ILC.
But one of the FAQs seems to help us out here.
Now that's a document up on the right hand corner of the screen that I really recommend
to you and I recommend all the docs but this one another new one.
January 2017 some questions and answers.
Someone asked, is something that is not being… sorry this is one of the answers, it's not
the question.
But the answer is, if something that is not being catered for in any of the models of
LAC and ECEI, then organizations are encouraged to put forward and application and it will
be assessed on its merits.
So I've put the location of where I found that answer and a copy of the cover on this
slide.
But there's multiple reads of this.
We will be sending the slides to everybody afterwards.
So how do you read that slide, and conjecture to me says they acknowledge that the LACs
are not going to be doing everything they should be doing, they acknowledge that ECEI
is going to struggle and they will assess your application on it's merits.
Scary space.
Selection criteria, so again I don't want to spend a lot of time reading stuff to you
that is available in application pack that you're going to be reading anyway, What
I do what to do is give you my particular bent of what jumps out at me and things that
people might not point out because of how history or who we are.
So criterion one is all about alignment but also evidence of need.
They're so heavy duty on evidence the NDIA has been since day one but they also acknowledge
that evidence is really tricky to find in a lot of the disability sector.
So your responses need to show where the evidence of this need in and we'll put a bit of time
a little bit later in this presentation into saying what this evidence might look like
because a lot of evidence might look like outcomes as well.
Criterion two is all about your methodology but I've highlighted quite a bit here, might
reduce needs for formal supports over time, reducing lifetime cost of the scheme.
Remember that is where we started.
So can you argue your methodology will reduce their costs of formal supports over time?
Involve people with disability, that's the people with disability being involved with
staff, governance or volunteering.
Partners and stakeholders and measuring progress towards ILC outcomes, now they're all things
we're going to pick up in strategy.
I think these are really important strategy tips they are giving you in the selection
criteria.
Criteria three, capacity and capability.
Now this in interested, an appropriate project management approach.
How will you detail that you're going to get the job done from beginning to end and
all the bits and pieces handled in the middle once you project management approach and there's
a bunch of other criteria in there.
Interestingly and I still haven't quite grasped why this has happened.
Criterion four doesn't apply to the national criteria.
So if you're doing a national readiness grant, don't worry about innovation as a
criterion.
That doesn't mean don't worry about innovation but it's not a specific selection criteria.
And these responses to me sort of contradict each other a bit, that you do innovation which
is new stuff and the second point is how do you build on existing stuff that reflects
a contemporary positive and progressive approach.
So there's sort of a get out on the innovation clause anyway that you can build on proven
approaches.
Which is great because not everything needs to be brand new.
How am I doing?
Great.
Cool.
Sustainability.
We get this all the time, we give you one off funding and you want it last forever.
How does that work, its frustrating, You are able to apply for more than one year of funding
but they haven't said how you do that, it's really tricky to see how you would apply for
more then one year of funding.
But whatever you apply for, at the end of it needs to magically sustain itself.
And I've been involved in philanthropy now for a lot of years and philanthropy tried
this for a decade or two saying you only want to fund stuff that can sustain itself and
a lot of philanthropies have given up on that and are saying no we realize stuff does need
core funding to success, it does need relationship.
So regardless, you're going to need to come back with an argument that says whatever you
do will fly after their money gets taken away.
So some of the suggestions we've heard is that you'll get corporate support for it,
you'll get other support for it, you'll get fee services support for it, whatever,
you're going to need support for it.
The last point I threw in is a risk mitigation strategy and that always sounds really scary
if you don't know what risk mitigation really means but it's really a bunch of people
sitting down and over a short period of time saying what are our key risks, what is likely
to go wrong?
And then you rate your risks as low, medium and high in terms of their impact.
Was it a really big risk that is going to do a lot of damage or was it a really small
risk?
And then low medium high in terms of likelihood, have you invented something that's never
going to happen anyway.
And then a strategy for mitigating those risks.
You're not going to have room in your application I would think to attach, and they don't
want attachments they haven't asked for, a full risk mitigations strategy but it shows
you understand those basic tenants.
That you've identified what could go wrong and you're mitigating what could go wrong,
having identified the likelihood of it.
So I think that's really important to show you understand what risk mitigation is because
they've put it in a few different times.
And I tricky one, the overarching considerations, so when they sit down at the end of it they're
going to talk about, is this value for money?
And how they measure that, they've put it in some bullet points there, they've got
risk mitigation again.
But I've highlighted the cost benefit, financial and nonfinancial cost benefit through the
whole grant cycle.
So if I was judging it, and reminding you I'm not, what's your cost benefit analysis?
Where are you saving us money?
But where are the non financial benefits as well?
But where aer you saving us money?
We've thrown in some other factors, some of them are in the documentation and we wanted
to pull them out stronger, and some of them are not in the documentation.
These are ours word, scalable and replicable, if they're real words.
Basically can you take what you've done and make it bigger!
Either take your idea and grow it nationally or take your idea and have other people copy
it nationally.
One idea we had, some said, oh we're only based in New South Wales and we're only
working with tenants, we won't get funded because it's just a state based scheme,
it's not a national scheme.
And our response was, well you're part of a national network of affiliated tenants unions,
why couldn't you show that you will scale it up through learnings and sharing it with
that national network?
So that would be an example of showing that even if you don't meet the national criteria,
there are ways through your national affiliations, that most of you will have one way or another,
that will really help you.
Well written, you've heard this since high school that you get better marks, you get
more attention, you're stuff gets through better if it's well written.
And it doesn't have to go to a bunch of consultants to charge you a lot of money to
do your applications for you, you might have an aunt, uncle, sister or son, that is good
an English and can just say, this doesn't make sense, you've said this twice, what
does this mean?
And make sure that the grammar is good, that it's easy ready, that it's punchy and
communicates well.
I just can't communicate enough, if they're reading thousands; you're much more likely
to head towards the trash if it's poorly written, poorly constructed.
Find a way to get someone to read it, which means not writing it at 10 minutes to on whatever
the 8th of march is.
Get it written beforehand so someone can have a look at it.
We've talked about the national implications of what you're doing; make sure you're
aware of those.
How do you hope to keep people out of the NDIS?
Ultimately the argument is that the ILC should support people to be included in the mainstream
and stay of the NDIS budget.
If you can show that your system helps keep people keep out of the NDIS and off the NDIS
budget, it's a tick.
Not as in you'll get it but one of the ticks you'll need.
This is one of their quotes but people rely less on specialist disability support.
The schemes using language, they're starting to use it publically, like disrupting the
mainstream specialist system.
So stopping, for example, the journey of a young person out of a specialist school, into
a specialist day program or into a ADE.
They want to disrupt that and support people to go into mainstream type options.
So that's an example of how could your program support people to move into mainstream supports
and out of specialist disability supports.
They love that stuff, sometimes a little too much.
And support people who do not have an NDIS plan, now that's big news for us, how do
we support those people outside of the scheme to get the support they need.
The scary thing about this part is that something like 460 thousand people will be eligible
for the National Disability Insurance Scheme plans.
Something like 900 thousand people including people with mental health problems will not
be eligible but will have a disability.
Some people with mental health problems will get in, a significant cohort will not.
900 thousand people with disability that are not eligible because they do not have a severe
enough disability to have a daily functional impairment, still need some support yet the
States are scurrying, a lot of the states, not all of them are scurrying there way out
of disability support as quick as they can.
What happens to those people?
Well they get some support from the ILC program, well the ILC program is very very small funding,
to be support 900 thousand people plus their carers plus their networks, it's just not
going to cut it.
And ultimately I think they will put more funding into the ILC because more people will
end up getting NDIS plans because they didn't get the small amount of support they needed
to stay out of the NDIS.
Questions?
So I have one question here regarding pre planning, since we have a question, there
were some organization is Queensland that were previously working in Pre planning.
Are they likely or would we advise them to apply for a similar work to support people
to make sure they're not getting their plans reviewed or worst planning outcomes?
That's a really tricky one.
I wouldn't like to give advice but that just that, so without giving you advise and
I'd be interested in your opinion of this Evie as our planning expert.
But that set out a few alarm bells of greyness to me.
So my few on this is that should very much be an LAC function, LAC should be responsible
for supporting people through the planning process and if the planning process is inadequate
it should really be the responsibility of the LAC to improve their planning process
rather than gap fill by supporting people before they come in.
That said, looking at the most vulnerable groups, specifically if you're looking at
people with really significant cognitive impairments from ATSI backgrounds and CALD backgrounds,
that would strike me as groups that the agency have recognizes have a natural disadvantage
with the process and will need more support coming into it.
Thanks.
So what we've done in our presentation, remember at the start I said two parts, one
part basic info so I've probably bored the pants off anyone who has the read the documentation
inside out over the last 30-35 minutes giving you the basic information but I know there'll
be a couple hundred of you out there that haven't read it as well.
That's the first part, what are the basics?
What can we apply for?
What should we be thinking about?
Now this is where strategy kicks in.
If thousands of applications are going to come across the desk, being strategic is a
very significant support for you being successful.
So what does being strategic mean?
It means ticking all of the boxes and then ticking some more.
So one of the criteria I've always use whenever doing applications, tenders, anything, is
to make sure I make it really easy for the person assessing it to say tick he answered
that one, tick he answered that one.
If you miss one you're automatically moving towards the edge of the disk and off the desk.
So first task is answer everything they've got and if you can't answer it, work out
a way to answer it.
But then once you've answered everything they've got, give them a couple things more
or a few things more.
So address all the selection criteria and give them more.
So how do you do that?
These are some of our ideas, you probably have some further ideas but this is our checklist
for adding extra value to make sure you've done what they've said they want from you.
So let's take some strategies for success one at a time.
They mention the importance of partnership and collaboration and imagine if you can't
tick a box.
And every tender I've ever done, you often find in tenders that you can't do one particular
area, someone else has particular expertise.
Why not partner or collaborate with that organization to fill you gap?
So when I'm ticking my boxes I can tick that box because you've gone out and found
a person who can do the thing that I can't do.
Yep?
We have a question, is there anyway to know who else is interested in a client for grants,
the grants that we're looking to partner effectively.
Has the NDIS ever announced any gap analysis or similar?
No but do you want to answer the question Evie about what we've done and what we can
make available to people?
So we ran a national forum in Canberra on Friday at 10 days ago and we created some
participant lists where we asked people to write down what area they were interested
in applying for and then we circulated that.
So we might send that out as well with the slides and collect your information for a
few days and then send that back out again.
So basically people in this webinar can collaborate.
So what Evie is saying I'll just repeat it, for those of you who are interested to
find a partner to fill a gap.
We've got a pro-forum that we've given to 120 organizations and a bunch of them filled
it out saying, look we're interested in mainstream inclusion, that particular area,
we're looking for a partner in this focus area and this is our contact details.
So we've already got a stack of those.
Evie is going to send it out to you guys saying are you looking for partner.
She'll give you a 48-hour turn around to fill in your bits on where, who you were looking
for and we'll publish that.
So 48 hours from today if that works we'll have it out and we will do it offering opportunities
to partner, it's a really good thing.
The other thing I just want warn you on about partnering is blinding rushing in or getting
ripped off.
So some of the smaller advocacy organizations out there, we've seen you guys be offered
very small, you know chicken feet money from large organizations so they can get your name
on a project winner and the give you 10 grand and don't give you any real part of the
project because they just wanted your name.
So be careful about getting ripped off.
The other one I'd advise if be careful about jumping into bed with an organization.
Sometimes I think you just need to be the lead organization and be very clear about
what you want from your partner, and make it a collaborator not a partner.
Partner may invite too senior of a role.
What you're looking for in that person and be very clear that it is a sub contract and
provide that and not tell you what to do.
So be careful.
Marry in haste, repent in leisure.
Collaborate.
Look at your competition, you're nuts not to.
Who else is likely to be applying for the website idea that you're applying for in
particular area.
What are they better at than you?
What are they going to pitch to the agency that says that they're really good at, that
they've got some track record at.
And then how can you match, mitigate, or overcome what you reckon they're good at.
So for example, someone applies, you're thinking and a think a lot of you are going
to be thinking about website and online information in a particular area, I'm not going to name
it because I'll upset someone.
And then you think wow our competitors have a lot more members than we have, is it possible
to partner with an affiliated group that can give you the reach they've got so you can
neutralize the advantage that they've got.
So it's just good practice to think about who else is out there, what are they doing,
how can you overcome the bits that they might beat you on.
I think this is really important, how can your project grow over time or how could someone
copy it and do similar stuff.
So that's what those two points say.
So again, I'm funding, If I was involved in the funding, I would be very much looking
at this as a major tick, a major strategic answer about how you scale.
And even if I was doing a Jurisdictional grant, I would still be arguing that I'm not going
to scale it but if I was going something local government, the Australian Local Government
Association could scale it.
I'm going to present it at conferences and I'm going to publish on it so that other
people can learn from it and scale my idea.
So how can we support organizations to grow what we're doing.
We're not looking for Mickey Mouse.
This is my speculation but I think it's reasonable, if you tick one or more then one
of these boxes, I'd be happy.
So say you're doing a particular project that is for people with downs syndrome and
you'll also do a rural and remote, you've got two ticks.
You could also do multi regional support and you've got three ticks.
So it could be strategic, we can't guarantee it will but it feels to us that it could be
strategic to tick more then one focus area if it's what you want to do.
People really strongly at the forum kept saying, stay true to who you are, don't compromise
what you want to do for funding and then there were other voices in the audience that said
the get the funding.
So you've go to choose your choice but you've got to choose your strategy.
Do you stay true to who you are or do you mold yourself a little to fit what they're
after.
Can't advise you on that one.
How to you add extra value, we know where do you get the extra dollars that are not,
the extra dollars value to them in their selection criteria that other people haven't spotted.
Why would it go further in your organization than in other places.
What is the impact beyond your grants?
So that's in the criteria but we're pulling it out as the key strategy.
Beware of rebranding that project that you've had on the desk for 6 months or 2 years that
you've desperately wanted to fund.
Cutting and pasting it and whacking it in the program application without making sure
it fits the guidelines and it speaks the language.
Because the cut and paste may not work.
So just be careful that it matches the program guidelines, it speaks the right language and
addressing the ILC outcomes.
When they're looking again at thousands and there are ones that are just not quite
right, they're not going to make the cut.
With this there is a lot of learning from other sectors, within our subsectors so what
could the Autism groups learn from the Epilepsy groups?
So for instance, and this a truth, Epilepsy groups have done some really interesting projects
on schools.
Could the Autism groups learn about those schools programs and the methodology?
But can we learn outside our sector?
We had a couple people in the forum are saying you know a lot of this is reinventing the
wheel, we've already done this in homelessness, we've already done this in other sectors.
Looking outside for proven outcomes in other sectors that we can bring to our sector.
And then how can you spread the learning across our sector when you've done it, how can
you network and present data.
Yep Evie?
Before we move on to outcomes which I know comes next, we've got a few questions for
you about applying and about the policy.
Will there be another funding round for national grants?
Short answer is I don't know, it's interesting that they've said there's another funding
round for Jurisdictional grants.
So does that leave the door open for another round of funding grants?
And you expressed yourself yesterday expressed dismay that there was another round of funding
just announced, we didn't know it was coming, they just keep doing stuff to us.
They do but do we expect there to be more national rounds while the other states roll
out in 2018/19?
Absolutely yes!
So sorry yeah thanks Evie.
Absolutely those states that we saw back on slides 2 or 3, it will make sense in a tick.
But yeah basically those earlier slides, there's one of them that tells you when the other
Jurisdictional grants are coming out.
We would strongly strongly strongly expect that national readiness will come out in tandem
or you know very closely associated with those sets of grants.
Ok so we have one more question about sustainability, given that sustainability is a criteria, could
an organization apply for recurring funding for the next three years and then talk about
sustainability after the three year period?
My read of that would be yes, you're allowed to apply for multiple year fundings.
So yes, I think you could apply for three years of funding but how, you know, I suppose
you just put a grant up and say you want x amount of bucks and x amount of bucks covers
three years of funding and after that you will be sustainable.
So again, I keep doing this unqualified but I need to, yes would be my answer from reading.
And the question is, the second part of the question is what would be the amount of money
that could be applied for each year?
And I would say is that the same logic applies as the last time we answered the question.
And that's we don't have any guidance as to the maximum amount you could apply for
but if you apply for three years of funding in this first year and you're looking at
something like the ACT where there is only $3million available then it does make it more
complicated.
Yeah, so hundreds and thousands of applications are going in for $13 million bucks and $3
million bucks.
I saw an article that I thought was a little bit sad, that an organization in the ACT was
really excited and got publicity around the fact that now they had block grant funding
that was going to save the day and the ACT for block funded organizations and its like
whoa.
National organizations are going to come in and try to grab that ACT money as well, it's
going to be intensely competitive.
There's going to be a lot of disappointed organizations at the end of this round.
One more question regarding strategy for application.
There's so much detail needed to populate the application and a pretty restricted word
limit, any advice?
Edit, edit, edit, edit, and then edit.
Seriously.
You can.
People who are good at editing, who are good at cutting out the crap, so find someone because
invariably we just put too many words to say the same stuff.
Say the stuff that they really want to hear, use the language that they really want to
hear and get someone that is really good.
Find someone that can edit.
And editors aren't that expensive, for some reason it's one of those things that you
know you're going to spend a fair amount of time and energy paying someone 30, 40,
50 an hour to spend three hours on your document, is a really good expenditure.
And one more question.
Sure.
And this is a curly one.
Primary health networks are currently planning to make primary health needs for some of the
same groups to be covered by the ILC.
It doesn't look like this work is going to coincide at all.
Could ILC applications demonstrate a collaboration with a health service?
Oooohhhhh That is a curly one.
You explain why it's a curly one.
We've had a couple questions about the interface with mainstream services, looking at health
and transport and education exactly.
And this is really one of the greyest areas of the NDIS, there the activity area that
looks at capacity building and mainstream services but I want to say I can't, I don't
know how that works.
So the NDIS, since day one or even before day one when they were drawing up the bilateral
agreements and legislation, they've been desperate not to fund what the health system
is responsible for.
But they're desperate for the health system to take on more responsibility for people
with disabilities.
So that's why it's so grey, they are really really really keen to put funding in to make
sure that health's are able to do the additional stuff that people with disability cost them
because that's where they are, prepared to fund.
But they're not prepared to fund stuff that health should have done anyway.
So I guess the advice if you were going to do that, there are some documents, and Evie
can make those available to you in the email, that show the delineations between health
and the NDIS, between all the systems and the NDIS and they're quite good documentation.
Just to give you some tips and some language around where you're project should begin
and end if you're doing overlaps with mainstream services.
And the truth is there is a lot of overlap with mainstream services because that is one
of the main criteria areas that they are funding.
Ok, one more question, cool, How national does a national application need to be and
cut to is the ACT included in a national approach?
How national does a national application have to be?
I read it as it has to have good opportunities for national take up so, two parts to that,
if you're not going to take it national, can you identify other sectors that will take
it national?
That's my read on it, and what was the second part of that question?
Is the ACT included in a national approach?
As far as I know we have exorcised the ACT yet maybe WA, that's a joke.
I know but you're right, WA doesn't have to be included in a national approach.
It does in some bits but yeah.
WA does have it's own ILC program which I draw your attention to and in one of the
early slides.
So this is one of the big ones for me because they've been talking about it, so evidence,
outcomes, you know it's got a lot of similarities.
I think they're going to, I know they're going to be looking for it, and it's just
how strongly they're looking for it.
How are you going to show that you'll be focused on outcomes in the grant?
How are you going to deliver outcomes?
And the outcomes are before, during and after the project.
So I reckon this is a winner for strategy.
So remember I've reordered their 4 ILC activity areas to match their reordered ILC activity
areas in their latest documentation.
So 4 activity areas, you know those, then the outcomes from the early framework are
down the bottom there.
So I've taken, there are two different slides put together, the top part of the slide is
the early ILC outcomes framework and the outcomes expected, those outcomes are still expected
but they've changed the way they relate to the 4 ILC activity areas.
So I can't do this in detail because it will confuse the crap out of you but basically
they want outcomes for each of these areas.
Those were the original outcomes they stipulated for each of those areas but they've now
changed the way they've ordered them.
And you can find those changes in this document.
So I'll start again.
You need to be big on outcomes, you need to show the sort of outcomes they're after.
This document gives you a really quite complex; it's not as outrageous as it looks, a table
of how to look at outcomes in your project.
So don't do it last thing at night, don't do it when you're tired, but have a look
at his diagram.
Have a look at all the different new outcomes that they're specifying, all the tips they're
giving you about activity outcomes, the center bit is the old outcomes, off to the left is
the new ones they're giving you.
So they're giving you a lot of really useful language and associating it with those outcomes
down the bottom.
A bunch of new outcomes in that document outline here associated with the original outcomes,
is that confusing enough?
Very.
Awesome, yeah, ok.
Sorry folks.
I try to explain but end up making it even worse so have a look at the document, tease
it out and there's some find print up the top you need to read as well just incase you
saw the diagrams and thought I've had enough.
So hooly dooly, we're going to do outcomes and we're going to do outcomes and we're
going to do outcomes because outcomes are really important, although we've never been
very good at measuring outcomes in the past, but suddenly we're going to get very good
at it.
And in our grant application we're going to say we're going to do outcomes and we're
also going to measure.
And so down the bottom of this slide you can see the information sessions got SVAs, Social
Ventures Australia to put together some material to help you think about outcomes and we're
recommending you have a look at it because there are some good questions there.
And the questions are, you know what are you trying to do, what's the activity, what's
the indicator, how will you collect the information, what tools will you use, what questions will
you ask and when will you collect it?
Before, during and after seems like a good idea to me but those measurement ideas I've
give you the email address down the bottom, sorry the web address.
Evie.
Is there consistent methodology provided to guide the collection of outcomes?
There's a couple of answers to that and one, there's a trick answer to that which
is if you look at the FAQs on the community hub site which you're recommended to look
at it tells you to use the score framework.
When we've asked the NDIA should we use the score framework, they say no.
That reflects the problems DSS run the community hub website and NDIA are running this process.
So you're getting some bad advice to be told to use the score measurement framework.
The thing they do lead you towards is, I'll click one more slide and come back to this
one, is in this ILC toolkit.
So Social Ventures Australia are operating a help line, focused on the ILC toolkit that
includes story build which is all about how do you put together outcomes, how do you look
at what the outcomes are for your project, it's pretty simple.
I think you're going to get a bunch of fairly simplistic answers but maybe that's what
you want on the help line.
But strongly recommend, that's the tool kit.
Have a squiz at it.
Does the storybuilder help you measure your outcomes?
I actually prefer that chart that I shower you before that Evie and I were reflecting
on how complex it is.
I think it's predicted here and there about doing outcomes.
So measuring outcomes, we're going to do it, finding outcomes, we're going to do
it and what are the types of things that they have told us through Social Ventures Australia
which is a contractor that did some work for them so you wonder how closely aligned they'll
be with this work but hopefully very.
Always there is quantitative and qualitative, quantitative is the numbers and qualitative
is the words.
So quantitative is you know, you do your surveys, you track what you're doing, you do some
experiments and clinical trials, that's suggestions around the qaunt.
The qualitative is really interesting too because they're saying can you back it up
with case studies, with interviews and focus groups, with observational case notes.
I'm going to throw in another set of outcomes that they've talked about in the documentation,
which is process outcomes.
So there also looking to say are you learning about the process of what you're doing in
the ILC grants as you're going.
So you are, you're actually reflecting on the methods that you're doing.
For those of use who are old enough action research is very reflective process for learning
as you go but as you do something you not only do it, do you learn about what you did
and could you do it better?
So that's this process outcomes in this documentation as well.
The other thing I wanted to highlight when I talked about evidence earlier, increasingly
people are accepting case studies as evidence.
So if you're able to put together a bunch of case studies in the absence of real data
to say that this is the difference it could make in people's lives and why it can be
generalized.
That's becoming an evidence base.
Slightly edgy but it's there and people are using and the agency is saying you can
use it too.
Case studies, individual stories as a way of highlighting evidence.
So evidence and outcomes.
So we talked about the basic information, we've talked about strategy, we've cut
down a whole day workshop into just on an hour that we've presented to you.
Should we take some questions Evie?
Sure.
So this is a rather specific question about financials.
So if you're looking, wanting to apply for a grant over $100 thousand you need to have
the financial track record, like audited financials, in this case if you're a start up and you
don't have that track record could you apply for a grant under $100 thousand, for example
$80K, but apply for it over three years which would equal $240 over three years.
I just really don't want to dunk that question too much, but I desperately want to dunk that
question, because number 1 in don't want to talk about, I have no idea the numbers
they're going to put on stuff.
So 100s of thousands, 10s of thousands or 5s of thousands, I really can't comment
on.
It's always tricky so if I could just say I have been involved trying to put up tenders
where we don't have the financial track record and generally and I'm not speaking
for the ILC in this case, you do want to see a match.
If you're giving someone a significant amount of bucks, and I think the question is does
the question realize this.
You want to see their ability to manage these bucks, so is there somewhere else you can
show that associated that shows you can manage those dollars or can you bring in a partner
organization that will you know help you manage the dollars.
Down side of that is they will also charge you, they always do, for managing the dollars
for you.
It's a tricky one but I think the person who asked the question knows the problems
they're confronting and I don't think putting it over multiple years helps it.
At the end of the day you're still being granted a grant that would be in excess of
$100 thousand, so you could put forth a program, a 3 year program that begins with an $80 thousand
year and demonstrate a plan for years 2 and 3, they could have that funding.
But I think as long as you're asking for that grant to be guaranteed, then it is a
grant over $100 thousand.
Yeah and how do years 2 and 3 unless it's a guarantee, its exactly what we just said
Evie.
Ok.
So now in the application form it asks you to provide a breakdown of the grant funding
but the chosen coverage areas and it lists all states apart from WA to Victoria, do you
know why this is the case?
Oh no, I understand WA but not Victoria, Oh yeah so ok, No I don't know.
It should have Victoria in it and I don't know why WA would be there.
The coverage areas, did we cover that before?
Yep.
So there's a unit cost column in the budget template, how important do you think unit
costing is in an application?
Do you want to do that one?
No you go ahead.
I just imagine it's in the application, they're going to want to see some evidence
of it and unit costing has been the currency of the financial bit of the NDIS for a couple
years so I suspect something that looks like a unit cost is going to be very important
to them.
Do you think $1 million to $2.5 million for the right strategy over a 2-3 year period
would be considered?
It would have to be pearler, it would have to be a real.
Yeah the right, yeah it would just have to knock their socks off.
Then you're talking about taking close to 10% of the funding at a national level or
50% of it a state level, so you're going to need to meet a lot of goals.
And I wonder about the politics of the ILC as well, because I used to work in one of
the biggest blindness organization, I've worked in a bunch of the big organizations.
And they're all in a lot of financial trouble, do a lot of ILC work and is quite well politically
connected.
I suspect there's going to be a lot of pressure from them to get, to get funding out of the
scheme.
So you've got that pressure, you've got local members pressure, you've got people
in the ACT saying that god they're funding us when it's not clear if they're getting
funded.
Yeah so any big grants would have to be pearlers and really easy to justify and we did this
because its really fabulous.
Is there anyway to add supporting documentation to the online applications?
My read of it, you can't.
My read of it is, I think it's pretty clear it says don't attach anything that we didn't
ask to be attached, and so that's a big no but that's my read.
Will the ILC fund initiatives that will focus on carers?
That's a really good question.
I think yes.
I think they have to, so yes.
Is my read.
That's all the questions that we have at the moment if any one has any questions they'd
like to add.
But that's pretty much perfect time and we have actually heard that any webinar that
goes for more than one hour starts to wear people out.
So unless something pops up in the next 20-30 seconds, then this was perfect timing and
we hope the hour was useful.
I do want to recap and as I'm recapping I want to tell you about our forthcoming workshops,
so we're running workshops on support coordination, how to cut costs in your organization but
still deliver better outcomes and not kill your culture, your leadership stuff, how to
develop delivering a values based commercial culture and our very popular 8 steps to NDIS
success.
But all the details for those are on the website so I'm not going to do a pitch for them.
But I do just want to recap on where we've got to, that it's going to be very tight,
very competitive, you're going to have to have a strategy, it's good to get it edited
and if there's possibilities for partnerships, look at them.
Is there anything else you'd add Evie?
Do you just want to talk briefly about the process of partnering, you're going to send
out the stuff in the next 48 hours.
So following this webinar we will send out an email immediately now with slides and we'll
also send some questions for you to answer regarding what you would like to, actually
do you know what we'll do, I'll send you the slides and I'll send our a Google sheet
where you can enter directly the areas that you're looking for collaboration and then
you'll be able to see as other people populate it, what they're interested in.
And we also forward the participant lists from the forum that we ran two weeks ago in
Canberra where some organizations have already listed the areas they are looking for for
collaboration.
Then directly after.
Later today you should also receive a recording of this webinar and in a couple days time
you will see the recording with captions.
So you're going to be hearing from us all week.
You're not going to have to miss us.
Last question.
Ok, here's a good one, you'll like it.
Will ILC fund a local government for something that overlaps or builds on local government
commitments to the disability inclusion access plan and the national implantation strategy?
Sounds like a great, you can't say they would or wouldn't fund it but would love
to see them enhancing the role of local government.
They've done a project, we haven't seen the outcomes of it, the NDIA has funded a
project on the role of local government, it would be worth trying to find what that project
is saying.
So without answering the specifics about a disability action plan, if you could show
how that project could be applied to other local governments and improve outcomes for
people with disabilities, I'd certainly be looking at it if I was funding it.
Thanks folks!
I know webinars are not always a scintillating form of presentation but it's a great way
to reach a large number of people.
We hope you've found it useful, we've put a lot of work into doing that, the slides
are coming, the survey is coming and we might also ask you whether you find the webinar
format useful or not because it will be really good to know if we should continue.
Thanks very much.
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