Overview

• To provide the highest level of care, HWH recognises we must ensure business continuity during and following a major disruption as far as practicable.
• Disruptions may occur as disasters, emergencies, or disruptive events. These disruptions may significantly impact client homes, equipment, products, or our ability to deliver services and, therefore, require appropriate foresight to reduce the impact on our business operations and the clients we support.
• Our business continuity plan is based on the Prevention, Preparedness, Response and Recovery framework.
• Each stage has a primary objective:
  • Prevention – identifying and analysing risk factors
  • Preparedness – assessing the impact of adverse risks through a business impact analysis utilising the HWH Risk Matrix
  • Response – a set of comprehensive steps to mitigate and respond to adverse risks
  • Recovery – a set of comprehensive steps that plan for return to regular service.
  • Reference - HWH Emergency Management Plan, HWH Disaster Plan 

• preparing HWH for a disruptive event
• responding to a disruptive event
• recovering from a disruptive event.

• NDIS (Code of Conduct) Rules 2018 (Cth)
• NDIS (Provider Registration and Practice Standards) Rules 2018 (Cth)
• Business Continuity Plan

Policy

• The first stage of ensuring business continuity is developing our risk management plan.
• The risk management plan assesses and mitigates potentially disruptive events to our business and clients. As we support our clients who may have reduced capacity to act in potentially disruptive situations, we must assess risks with the recognition that our primary aim is to always protect clients' and workers' well-being.
• When we conduct a risk management plan, we:
  • Identify hazards and risk factors that have the potential to cause harm, such as: 
    • Bushfires, floods, cyclones, etc. 
    • pandemics 
    • worker strikes 
    • lifesaving equipment malfunctions. 
  • Analyse the risks associated with those hazards, such as: 
    • building damage 
    • infection or health deterioration of clients and workers 
    • reduced staffing 
    • resource cut-offs such as power or water. 
  • Evaluate the risk associated with that hazard and prioritise it according to its significance on the impact on our organisation, clients or workers: 
    • health and safety 
    • finances 
    • operability 
    • compliance 
    • access to vital resources, including power, water, PPE, etc. 
    • Reputation. 
  • Determine appropriate ways to eliminate or control the hazard when the hazard cannot be eliminated (risk control). Strategies may include: 
    • insurance 
    • secondary disaster locations 
    • emergency client plans 
    • mandatory training to appropriately skill your workforce 
    • back-up resources or power sites.
• We recognise that the execution of any plan is contingent on appropriately trained and skilled staff. Therefore, HWH seeks to train and skill our staff in the required emergency response activities they will need to perform. In a complete worker shortage, we will seek to collaborate with retired workers and other organisations to support our clients and their needs.  

• Identifying and assessing risks and potential ways to mitigate such concerns ensures we can develop comprehensive strategies to minimise the impact on our clients, home support workers and HWH.
• Our business impact analysis will inform you of these strategies used to respond and recover.
• Our business impact analysis seeks to identify:
  • The key business activities
  • the specific impact to our clients, workers and HWH in the event this key business activity was not performed or operated at a reduced performance
  • how long would HWH survive without reduced service delivery?

• To respond to disruptions promptly and comprehensively, we develop response plans based on our findings in the business impact analysis and risk management plan. Each potential disruption identified will have the following elements documented in the Business Continuity Plan: 
  • immediate response checklist
  • evacuation or infection control procedures
  • emergency kits
  • roles and responsibilities for key managers and workers
  • key contact information details and,
  • event log of decisions and actions taken during the immediate response.
• An immediate response checklist should be a series of questions workers or key managers can answer to activate the required response.
• Evacuation, lockdown, or infection control procedures detail how any individual on the premises should proceed in the event of one of these critical incidents. As we support our clients, we are responsible for ensuring that for each identified risk, we have an appropriate procedure to evacuate, lockdown, or control infection for each vulnerable client.
• Emergency kits are easily maneuverable, carriable, or offsite securely stored information containing essential documents and items required in our services' operation. This may include:
  • emergency contact details of workers and clients and their next of kin/support networks
  • emergency response plans and any other NDIS-related plans for vulnerable clients
  • client medication lists and first aid equipment
  • personal protection equipment
  • basic toolkits and light sources
  • backups of business information, etc.
• These items should be regularly inventoried and updated.
• Roles and responsibilities refer to who and what is required of workers and key managers during disruptive events. This section of the business continuity plan allows HWH to assign roles to activate emergency initiatives and ensure adequately skilled workers are in place to navigate the situation. In general, all roles will have assigned a leader and secondary alternative if the leader cannot perform their responsibilities.
• Key contact details are a comprehensive list of internal (workers and key managers) and external (clients, client emergency contacts, emergency services, community partners, etc.).
• An event log is a log of events and the decisions or responses taken during a critical incident. This may provide an important basis for insurance, business operation claims or for regulatory bodies, after the fact.

• The recovery phase of our business continuity plan focuses on returning to operating our key business activities as soon as possible after the critical response.
• This is fundamental within our operation as we support clients who require specific levels of care to maintain their quality of life.\
• Our recovery process will focus on:
  • developing strategies to recover all business activities
  • detailing resources required to recover all business activities
  • detailing the key manager or worker's responsibility to return to business operations.
• In developing recovery strategies, we will adopt a ‘worst-case scenario’ framework that is scalable to the actual impact of the event.

• As a registered NDIS service provider, we must notify the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commissioner (the Commissioner) of any changes and events that affect our ability to provide the support and service we are registered to provide.
• In most circumstances, activating our business continuity plan would constitute the grounds for informing the Commissioner via the NDIS Commission Portal.
• This responsibility will be allocated in our response to a disruptive event.