Announcing The Companies Presenting At The Karista "I've Got A Great Idea'' Event - 2 October 2019

Therapy Connect is an evidence based online provider of a range of Allied Health assessment and support services (OT, SP, Psych, Dietitian, Physio) for “hard to reach” participants utilising telehealth. Simone Dudley, Founder, explains how Therapy Connect has become a leader in telepractice service provision in Australia.

NECAS, or Non Electronic Communication Aids Service, were launched by Scope Australia and are  personalised, high quality, non-electronic communication aids such as calendars, communication boards, alphabet boards, checklist and a wide range of other communication aids for children and adults with severe speech or language disorders. Scope provides information, free resources (webinars and handouts online), training and therapy for people with communication disabilities and their support networks.

Busy Beans provides barista training and support, to participants allowing them to move into either disability employment services or mainstream supportive employment.  The program aligns strengths of people with Autism and intellectual disabilities who often do well with repetitive tasks, but the digital app compensates for common challenges like short-term memory, multi-tasking and taking money. Matthew Ting, Founder of Busy Beans, will explain how the ability to scale up to thousands of coffee providers means participants can secure employment, and be paid at the award wage, allowing financial independence. 

Ready TechGo  provides personalised one on one technology training that empowers NDIS participants, enabling them to remain independent and connected in a digitally driven world. Lisa Du will explain the range of technology lessons Ready Tech Go provide, and how they are personalised to the individual whether they seek help with how to use Facebook, email, how to scan illustrations or photos, how to fill in forms online.  Ready Tech Go allows individuals to learn at their own pace, on their own device, and in the comfort of their own home with a patient and supportive tutor.

Tali is an online assessment and therapy training tool for children with attention difficulties who struggle to focus their mind on a task, to listen, to absorb information or to control impulsive behaviors and emotional outbursts.  Marcus Hughes will outline how this digital tool, backed with 25 years of clinical research undertaken by Monash University, is delivered via a touchscreen tablet and strengthens attention skills by using the program for 25 minutes a day for 5 weeks to deliver measurable and meaningful improvements.

myDriveschool is a simulation game that teaches people how to drive online. Delivered via a PC with a portable steering wheel, it is designed to bridge the gap between theory and practical driver training. Lisa Skaife, founder of myDriveschool, has found unexpected take up of this game with people with special needs (autism, learning difficulties, engagement issues), disability (physical/mental) & assistance for clients requiring rehabilitation and will describe how it increase competency levels and reduce anxiety for drivers in a safe & controlled environment.

genU GAMER is a digital technology that embraces the gaming sub-cultures, by encouraging and supporting individuals through the use of digital technology and tabletop gaming. By utilising popular gaming hobbies, GAMER provides platforms for young people to develop social skills and build their capacity by exploring, testing and practising a wide variety of valuable life skills. Developed by service provider genU, GAMER uses “off the shelf” games but leverages them in a purposeful way so that the natural and fun act of playing them is linked to real world advantages, coping abilities, self-identity and social integration.

And here's a look at the bio’s of our three Industry Experts panellists who will lend their expertise to critique and comments on each of our companies:

SUE PEDEN

Sue understands disabilities deeply, caring for two of her four children who were born with a rare, life-shortening, genetic disorder and personally experienced the issues faced by carers. Sue joined the board of Carer’s Australia in 2013.

Working in marketing and communications for more than 30 years, including establishing her own agency which was sold five years later, Sue’s professional focus is business and brand strategy, consumer insight and stakeholder management. Sue understand consumer behaviour and how to leverage that to achieve business objectives. Her current business, Sue Peden Communication Consulting, works with large multi-nations through to start-ups.

Sue has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne, is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and was recently awarded the Member of the Order of Australia (OAM) for Significant Service to Community.

KEVIN STONE

With more than 40 years’ experience in the disability field, Kevin has worked relentlessly to improve the lives of people with disability, both as an individual advocate and systemically by influencing state and national policy. As Chair, Kevin has been at the forefront of developing national policy and representing and championing the voice of self-advocates. Kevin has also served as the CEO of the Victorian Advocacy League for Individuals with Disability (VALID) since 1989.

Kevin is the author of a number of training programs and resources and has contributed to significant person-centred reforms that have increased the independence of people with disability. These include the introduction of individualised funding, Victoria’s self-direction initiatives, and the campaign for an NDIS. Kevin has also represented people with disability and their families on state and national reference groups and ministerial advisory committees over the past 25 years.

Kevin was recognised by the Order of Australia on the Queen’s Birthday 2019 Honours List for his significant service to the Disability Community.

DEB DEAN

Deb is a strong and visionary leader with an excellent ability to co-opt stakeholders to achieve the same vision.  Currently Deb is leading the Victorian Boosting Local Workforce team of NDIS with the objectives of reducing barriers that impact providers, to improve the operation and efficiency of the disability labour markets structure, and to accelerate learnings for providers.

Prior to her 20 years of as a project leader across project for many companies in the not-for-profit, public and private sectors, Deb trained and worked in Nursing. Like many working in the disability industry, Deb has a family member who qualifies for NDIS and brings a carer’s deeper understanding of autism and related issues.

Deb brings extensive experience in the commercial realities of NDIS and balancing those with the needs of participants.

Is there a link between gut bacteria and mental health?

The gut and the gut microbiome have become hot topics recently, with many studies being undertaken to to discover how they work and what links they may have to our mental and physical health.

The latest is research at the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology and the Catholic University of Leuven who have made a preliminary discovery into the difference between the gut health of those with and without depression.

Publlished in Nature Microbiology, researchers studied medical tests and GP records to look for links between depression, quality of life and the microbes lurking in the faeces of more than 1,000 people enrolled in the Flemish Gut Flora Project.

What the scientists learnt is that two bugs Faecalibacterium and Coprococcus were commonly found in people who said they had good mental health. On the flip side, those with depression had lower than average levels of Coprococcus and Dialister.

This study has not yet proven the link between gut microbes and mental health. What is showing however, is the possibility that the effect also works the other way around. Which means that your mental health may influence how your microbiome works. In follow-up experiments, the scientists found gut microbes can at least talk to the human nervous system by producing neurotransmitters that are crucial for good mental health. Interestingly, the same study discovered microbiomes which live outside the body are not able to make the same kinds of neurotransmitters, this is thought to happen because they did not co-exist with humans.

If a connection between low level bacteria and depression can be found, the door may open to a whole world of exciting possibilities and potential discoveries.

If you would like to read the full report published in Nature Biology click here or for a shorter version click here for the Guardian Australia.

ANOTHER YEAR BITES THE DUST: 2018 WITH THE NDIS by DSC

It is that time of year again. It is officially acceptable to have put up your Christmas tree and to be candidly counting down the days on your calendar until the work year is over. Your body might still be in the office, but your mind has probably already checked-in to an all-inclusive Pacific resort that boasts of a generous happy hour and little-to-no climate change related disturbances. You’re living the dream.  Well, almost.

While our eyes might firmly be on the prize, the year is not over yet. And if there is one thing this time of year lends itself to more than season’s greetings and absent work hours, it is reflection. In that spirit, we thought we would take a brief moment to reflect on the NDIS year that has (almost) passed.

NEW PARTICIPANT PATHWAYS

The year began on a positive note with the release of the Pathways Review, which acknowledged that the NDIS had fallen seriously short of community expectations in the ways it interacted with Participants, families and providers. The Review promised the end of the phone planning era- which to everyone’s complete astonishment had apparently not been a resounding success.  As part of a sweeping set of reforms, we were promised a new Provider Pathway and General Participant Pathway, as well as cohort specific pathways for children under six, people with complex support needs, people with psychosocial disabilities, people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, people living in remote or very remote communities, and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Since then, the NDIS website has also alluded to a LGBTQIA+ pathway. You can read more about the Pathway Review in our article from February.

The new General Participant Pathway has been trialed in Victoria. The NDIA deemed the trial a success and (we are told) the Pathway will soon roll out across the rest of the country. However, the cohort specific pathways have been moving at a considerably slower pace.  In October, the Agency began running workshops to learn about the needs of these cohorts. In November, it was announced that the Complex Support Needs Pathway would commence its rollout, beginning in Brimbank-Melton and Western Melbourne. So progress is a bit slow, but still:

INDEPENDENT PRICING REVIEW

 Also in February (it was a busy, hopeful and dreamy age), McKinsey & Company released their hotly anticipated Independent Pricing Review (IPR). The review was designed to explore the challenges that the NDIS provider market faced and to make recommendations to avert market failure. Amazingly, the Agency gave its support to all 25 of the IPR’s recommendations. Some of these were implemented in the 2017/18 Price Guide, including a 2.5% Temporary Support Overhead (TSO) and new rules about provider travel and cancellations. Last week, the NDIA also announced a new pricing tier for self-care, social and recreational support for Participants with "very complex" support needs. Unfortunately, they are yet to define what “very complex support needs” actually means. Details, huh?

QUALITY AND SAFEGUARDING

Year 2018 was a huge one for quality and safeguarding, beginning in February with the establishment of the Quality and Safeguarding Commission. There is now officially a new sheriff in town and his name is Commissioner Graeme Head (get it, “head”?). Jury is still out on how well he responds to jokes about his name, but from then on, the Commission became the gift that kept on giving. We got a new Code of Conduct, Practice Standards, draft Practice Guidelines and a new portal. All this only just in time before NSW and SA transitioned to the Quality and Safeguarding Framework in July 2018. A lot has been happening in this space in a short amount of time. It’s a bit of a pain in the short term, but when we finally have a nationally consistent quality and safeguarding regime it will (hopefully) all be worth it. 

SDA AND SIL

It has been a rollercoaster of a year for Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) and Support Independent Living (SIL). It began in April with the release of the SDA Provider and Investor Brief, a document our consultant Brent Woolgar described at the time as full of “new contradictions, new terminology, new risks, new uncertainties.” From this low point, the NDIA did manage to repair some of the damage throughout the year with the release of new data and information that offered providers a bit more market clarity. We are now waiting on the final, DRC endorsed outcomes of the SDA Framework Review which is due late January 2019 (so we can probably expect it some time in August). In the SIL space, the new Quoting Tool released in September (only two months late) has transformed an exceptionally complicated and resource intensive quoting process into a fairly complicated and resource intensive quoting process. It’s all about those baby steps. On a more positive, less sarcastic note, there is a real optimism emerging within the SDA market and we are quietly optimistic that 2019 is the year SDA takes off.

THE NDIS TURNS 5

 This year marked the 5th Birthday of the NDIS. While the Scheme is still young, it is growing up fast. Slowly, it is beginning to form its own character, values and traditions. It will not be long before the NDIS is a teenager and starts pretending it does not know us in public. Before that day comes, we need to make sure we are taking every opportunity we are given to create a better NDIS. Particularly, opportunities that arise through pug related gifs.

Moving image: With a tear falling from his eye, a pug looks down at a birthday cake marked "NDIS" and cannot bring himself to blow out the candle.

Year 2018 has been a busy one for the NDIS. As the rollout continues and the Scheme matures, we can probably expect there to be many more like it. But now is not the time to worry about what the new year will bring. It is nearly Christmas after all. Presents and public holidays await you. So, for the time being, let your mind travel back to that beautiful Pacific island and forget all about those four pesky letters: N-D-I-S.   

From all of us at DSC: enjoy your well earned break and have a happy new year.

National Diabetes Week

This week marks National Diabetes week, did you know that Diabetes is one of the 8 major chronic diseases Australians live with?  A chronic disease is acknowledged as a long lasting condition with persistent effects and social and economic consequences.

If you are living with diabetes and need help at home please visit Karista to find services in your local area.

Facts About Diabetes

• 280 People develop Diabetes every day - that's one every five minutes
• Around 1.7 million Australians have diabetes which includes all types of diagnosed diabetes and a silent, undiagnosed type 2 diabetes
• For every person diagnosed with diabetes there is usually a carer or family member who also lives with Diabetes

What is Diabetes?

When you have diabetes, your body can't maintain healthy levels of glucose (a form of sugar) in the blood.  For our bodies to work properly we need to convert glucose from food into energy. A hormone called insulin is essential for the conversion of glucose into energy. In people with diabetes, insulin is no longer produced in sufficient amounts. When people with diabetes eat glucose, which is in foods such as breads, cereals, fruit and starchy vegetables, legumes, milk, yoghurt and sweets, it can’t be converted into energy.

Instead of being turned into energy the glucose stays in the blood resulting in high blood glucose levels. After eating, the glucose is carried around your body by your blood; blood glucose level is called glycaemia. Blood glucose levels can be monitored and managed through self care and treatment.

Different Types of Diabetes

Type 1 Diabetes

Type 1 diabetes is an auto-immune condition in which the immune system is activated to destroy the cells in the pancreas which produce insulin.  We don't know why this happens, Type 1 diabetes is not linked to lifestyle factors.  There is no cure and it cannot be prevented.

Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes is a condition where the body becomes resistant to the normal effects of insulin and or gradually loses the capacity to produce enough insulin in the pancreas.  We do not know what causes Type 2 diabetes but do know that lifestyle, genetics and family are related risk factors.

Gestational Diabetes

Gestational diabetes mellitus (sometimes referred to as GDM) is a form of diabetes that occurs during pregnancy. Most women will no longer have diabetes after the baby is born. 

Gestational diabetes is the fastest growing type of diabetes in Australia, affecting thousands of pregnant women. Between 12% and 14% of pregnant women will develop gestational diabetes  usually occurring around the 24th to 28th week of pregnancy. All pregnant women should be tested for gestational diabetes at 24-28 weeks of pregnancy (except those women who already have diabetes). 

Source: Diabetes Australia and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Where can I get help?

If you are concerned that you or someone you care for may develop Diabetes, please see your GP for a check up.

If you're interested in reading more about the three main types of diabetes, a good place to start is Diabetes Australia website, or the Baker Institute 

Karista if you are looking for support and services in your local area.

Meet Tess: the mental health chatbot that thinks like a therapist

Therapy robots are an accessible option for caregivers who are busy assisting others but could use their own care.

 Source: The Guardian

Most days, Jillian Bohac feels overwhelmed. After her husband was hit by a truck while riding his bike, he suffered a brain injury that produced so many clots, she says, that it “looked like a night sky” on the CT scan. Once the most independent man she knew, he now needs help putting on his shoes. Bohac, a social worker, is now a full-time caregiver for her husband. “I’ve gained weight, lost all my friends, have anxiety – I’m a mess,” she says. “My focus is him, 100%. As a social worker, you’d think I’d know better, but it sneaks up on you, the self-neglect. You’re aware you have needs, too, but it just doesn’t work out that way.” When asked if there are enough supports out there for family caregivers, she is adamant that there are not.

Bohac is not an outlier. As of 2012, according to Statistics Canada, over 8 million Canadians provided care to a chronically ill or disabled friend or loved one. The country has an ageing demographic and an increasing number of long-stay home-care patients, so the number of older people in Canada who could need the assistance of caregivers, informal and professional, is growing. Many caregivers say they don’t have money to hire private care or a support network. For those in the middle of their careers who can’t afford to quit, government-funded programs that provide caregivers help from nurses and personal support workers become increasingly important. But those resources aren’t always immediately accessible to caregivers, and the system can be backlogged, depending on the area where a patient lives.

Tess is a mental health chatbot. If you’re experiencing a panic attack in the middle of the day or want to vent or need to talk things out before going to sleep, you can connect with her through an instant-messaging app, such as Facebook Messenger (or, if you don’t have an internet connection, just text a phone number), and Tess will reply immediately. She’s the brainchild of Michiel Rauws, the founder of X2 AI, an artificial-intelligence startup in Silicon Valley. The company’s mission is to use AI to provide affordable and on-demand mental health support. Rauws’s own struggles with chronic illness as a teenager brought on a depression that led him to seek help from a psychologist. In learning to manage his depression, he found himself able to coach friends and family who were going through their own difficulties. It became clear to him that lots of people wanted help but, for a number of reasons, couldn’t access it. After working at IBM – where he worked with state-of-the-art AI – Rauws had his “aha” moment: if he could create a chatbot smart enough to think like a therapist and able to hold its own in a conversation, he could help thousands of people at once and relieve some of the wait times for mental health care.

It was precisely that potential that caught the attention of Saint Elizabeth Health Care. A Canadian non-profit that primarily delivers health care to people in their own homes, Saint Elizabeth recently approved Tess as a part of its caregiver in the workplace program and will be offering the chatbot as a free service for staffers. This is the first Canadian health care organization to partner with Tess and the first time that Tess is being trained to work with caregivers specifically. “Caregivers are really great at providing care. But they are challenged at accepting care or asking for help,” says Mary Lou Ackerman, vice president of innovation with Saint Elizabeth Health Care. And there’s no doubt that many need support, given the high rates of distress, anger and depression. Caregivers often juggle their duties with their careers and personal responsibilities. The mental planning can take its toll. They might be in charge of, for example, organizing rides to appointments, making sure their spouse is safe when they run out to get their medications, clearing snow from the wheelchair ramp and checking their spouse does not fall while going to the bathroom at night.

To provide caregivers with appropriate coping mechanisms, Tess first needed to learn about their emotional needs. In her month-long pilot with the facility, she exchanged over 12,000 text messages with 34 Saint Elizabeth employees. The personal support workers, nurses and therapists that helped train Tess would talk to her about what their week was like, if they lost a patient, what kind of things were troubling them at home – things you might tell your therapist. If Tess gave them a response that wasn’t helpful, they would tell her, and she would remember her mistake. Then her algorithm would correct itself to provide a better reply for next time.

One of the things that makes Tess different from many other chatbots is that she doesn’t use pre-selected responses. From the moment you start talking, she’s analyzing you, and her system is designed to react to shifting information. Tell Tess you prefer red wine and you can’t stand your co-worker Bill, and she’ll remember. She might even refer back to things you have told her. “One of the major benefits of therapy is feeling understood,” says Shanthy Edward, a clinical psychologist. “And so if a machine is not really reflecting that understanding, you’re missing a fundamental component of the benefits of therapy.”

In your very first exchange with her, Tess will make an educated guess – drawing on the other conversations she has had with people and with the help of algorithms – about which form of therapy might be most effective. That doesn’t mean she’s always right. If her attempted treatment – say, cognitive behavioural therapy – turns out to be wrong, she’ll switch to another one, such as compassion-focused therapy. How does Tess know when she’s wrong? Simple: she asks. “Tess will follow up on issues the user mentioned before or check in with the patient to see if they followed through on the new behaviour the user said they were going to try out,” says Rauws.

Tess’s great value is accessibility. Many caregivers found Tess convenient to talk with because she could be reached at any time – something they don’t have a lot of. “Caregivers say they can’t get out of their home. They’re so boggled with so many things to do,” says Theresa Marie Hughson, a former shelter worker who had to retire from her job three years ago to care for her relatives, including her husband, who suffered from chronic pain for over 19 years before passing in July. Hughson, who’s from St John, New Brunswick, says that when she was really burned out from caring for her husband, she tried to use a mental-health service for seniors offered by the province. It took a month for her to get her first appointment. “There was nobody there when I was really having a struggle coping,” says Hughson.

It may be some time before we integrate chatbots fully into regular care. While she is trained to act like a therapist, Tess is not a substitute for a real one. She’s more of a partner. If, when chatting with her, she senses that your situation has become more critical – through trigger words or language that she has been programmed to look for – she will connect you with a human therapist. In other cases, she might provide you with the resources to find one. That said, many caregivers who chatted with Tess said they felt more comfortable opening up to her precisely because they knew she was a robot and thus would not judge them. Julie Carpenter, a leading US expert on human-robot social interaction, cautions against overestimating the effectiveness of mental-health algorithms. “I think we can come really far with AI as a tool in psychological therapy,” she says. “However, my personal opinion is that AI will never truly understand the subjective experience of a human because it’s not a human.”

Carpenter suggests that we have to recognize that chatbots are machines, despite their increasing sophistication. They do what we tell them to do. They think how we teach them to think. How well we reflect, and act, on what we learn about ourselves – what scares us, what calms us down – is largely up to us.

Some useful links for our young ones

It can be difficult to talk to children or young adults who are finding it hard to articulate their needs. Below are some easy to access online resources to help. Considering our young ones are so computer savvy sending them to links to assist in the process, or it could be something you access yourself to assist in the discussion. See below - some great links:

Bullying at work - WorkSafe Victoria - click here

Victoria Legal Aid - Workplace Bullying - click here

Kids Helpline – click here

Lifeline – click here

Beyond Blue - click here

Youth beyond Blue – click here

Headspace - click here

Youth Off the Streets - click here

Department of Health Victoria - click here

StreetSmart Australia - click here

Homelessness Australia - click here

Department of Health and Ageing - Mental Health - click here

Asperger Syndrome and Adults - Better Health Victoria - click here

Autism Victoria - click here

Autism Help – click here

What is important when searching for care for a loved one?

Whether you are looking for your child who has particular needs, or for your mum who is getting older and needs assistance with things at home, it is important to balance care with cost. It is without a doubt that care is most important but very few of us can afford to splash out testing and trying different services to understand what is best. So, reviews play a big part as does the quotation process. Karista allows carers to review providers, the services available and has implemented a star rating system. As the business is new it needs support from the community to get reviews. Help out your peers, or people like you, by rating your provider. Your opinion does matter, a review by you could mean the difference for the next person who is in a similar position to you. Search and review your provider in Melbourne or Geelong at www.karista.com.au

Search and review your provider

www.karista.com.au

How to save time researching home care or disability support services.

It really is hard finding services that meet the needs of a loved one that requires assistance at home. Services for just one person can vary from personal care to nursing services as well as someone to provide transport. It can often even extend to OT or physio services. And then you need to ensure that the services are delivered to the right area, that the service provider is accredited and also provides care for your funding type which could vary across all of those services. It can be a nightmare! Karista is learning from the community what services are needed across the board. Today Karista offers a range of services, across multiple funded and non-funded options for all age groups in Melbourne and Geelong and over time will increase its service offering and location (soon to be national). Karista is a super quick and easy to use tool that uses an algorithm to collate important information from the user in order to provide extremely relevant and accurate information, you can then review each of the relevant providers and request a quote. Features are being added regularly as information comes from carers and the community. Feel free to drop us a line - we love feedback! info@karista.com.au Or request a quote - www.karista.com.au

Carer Community - Your reviews count

Making decisions about somebody else’s care needs is a huge responsibility and can be a daunting task.  Choosing a provider for someone who needs help at home, we know you’ve got their bests interests at heart but how do you know you are really making the right choice of provider?  It is such an important decision and one that will never be taken lightly. 

You can be safe in the knowledge that there are many others like you and we like to think that we might be able to help.  Karista is creating a community of likeminded people who share their experiences in order to help others make informed decisions.  We want to encourage you to take the time to provide feedback about your experience with providers you have used.  We also want you to use the ratings and reviews that others have provided to guide you in making the right decisions for your loved one. Karista wants to help you make informed decisions because we know how important your role is as a carer and we know how much you care.

You can find us on our website at www.karista.com.au