Summary

COMPARISON OF HACC AND DISABILITY SERVICE STANDARDS

Agencies which conform to the Disability Service Standards would be required to provide additional evidence to satisfy HACC requirements in the following key areas:

  • assessment and review assessment of consumers, although it should be noted that this apparent ‘gap’ may be a result of terminology rather than practice,
  • provision of information to consumers in regard to the basis of service provision,
  • information gathered to enable effective and appropriate service planning and development,
  • responsiveness to ‘upheld’ complaints, and
  • assistance provided to consumers should there be a conflict between a consumer and his or her primary carer.

It should be noted that:

  • Differences between the two systems would essentially preclude the existence of a meaningful comparative score.
  • Potentially, an add-on system could be developed, which would allow an appraisal of the “missing” elements of the HACC standards.
  • If this approach were adopted and developed, the duplication of quality appraisal processes would be reduced, with the trade-off being loss of comparability between these “combined” appraisals and the straight HACC appraisals.