A Service for One is more than a support structure… It's a safeguard.
In this presentation, Sheree Henley – founder of The Good Life Builders and mum of Isaac – shares how, after trying eleven service providers without finding reliable quality support, she and her husband David set up Isaac’s Band Pty Ltd: a family-owned, family-governed “Service for One.”
Sheree explains what a Service for One is, how it differs from a microboard, and how the model addresses the specific risks Isaac faces – from gaps in support and health system vulnerability to social isolation and long-term planning. She also shares the practical steps involved in setting one up and reflects on how it has transformed life for Isaac and her family.
Meet Sheree Henley
Sheree Henley is the founder and Managing Director of The Good Life Builders, supporting parents of adult children with disability to build good lives in the community. She is the mum of Isaac – a Canberra Raiders fan, assistant storeman, gym member, gardener and much-loved friend, brother and son – who lives in Hervey Bay, Queensland, supported by a family-owned “Service for One” called Isaac’s Band Pty Ltd.
Transcription
Please note that the transcription provided may contain occasional errors.
I’d just like to acknowledge that we’re on Indigenous land and pay my respects to Elders, past, present and emerging and any Indigenous people here.
Just as a quick exercise, I’d like to get some understanding of your experiences in the room. So those of you that use service providers to provide services for the person in your life, can you raise and keep your hand up, please? Nice and high, so we can see who you are.
Okay, keep your hand up. Only keep your hand up if you think those services are reliable, good quality, long-lasting… and then put your hand down if they’re not. Lots of hands going down, and amazing that you’ve got somebody that’s fantastic.
Now, those people that use independent support workers, can you put your hand up? Okay, keep it up if you can say that they’re reliable, long-lasting, good quality and work well as a team and don’t make you do all of the coordination. Some hands going down. Yeah. Yep, yep. Okay.
Hands up if you directly employ your staff. Nice and high. Okay, keep your hand up if you can say that they’re reliable, long-lasting, good quality, and don’t make you do all of the coordination.
There you go. Thank you. Put your hands down. All right. Did you notice what happened?
Okay. So people who directly employ tend to, not always, of course, tend to get better quality, longer-lasting, more reliable supports, and you’re not doing all the bloody work. Okay.
So what is a Service for One? It’s a business structure. My son’s Service for One is called Isaac’s Band Proprietary Limited. It’s overseen by a board of people. It does not have to be, though. And the people on the board are people who know and love the person and care about them, and they’re not paid.
They directly employ staff, and the organisation only supports one person, although every now and then, some services for one might have a brother and sister that have a disability, and they support both of them or something like that.
Now you might have heard of micro boards. What’s the difference? I’m often asked.
Micro boards have a specific kind of legal structure; they’re incorporated associations. And they don’t necessarily directly employ. Services for one directly employee, but don’t necessarily have a board. And services for one don’t necessarily have one specific type of legal structure either.
A micro board is a trademarked name, and they originated in Canada. And Services for One were originally described by Inclusion Australia. So it wasn’t something I invented, that’s for sure. And I’m not quite sure I like being called a Service for One, because it’s too damn close to actual services. That makes me nervous.
Okay. What’s a safeguard? I needed to define that for myself. So these are some of the things that I found.
A measure or a precaution put in place to protect against potential harm. Strategies, mechanisms or procedures designed to ensure safety, security or stability. Safeguards are implemented to mitigate risks and prevent adverse outcomes. So that’s what I’m going to talk about today in terms of what safeguards are.
So this is my very handsome son, who I’m very enormously proud of. His name’s Isaac. He’s 27 in August. He was born in Yorkshire, England. So he’s a Yorkshire lad.
As I mentioned, we have a Service for One called Isaac’s Band Proprietary Limited. And we came up with that name because Isaac really loves live bands. And we love the word ‘band’ because it kind of described a group that contributed to the community. Bands make life wonderful and bring enjoyment to the community.
They also collaborate really well with each other to make their music. So we loved that name. So we went with, and Isaac’s loving it too. We drew some pictures for him to show him some various options, and he was very much drawn to the band.
So we live in Hervey Bay in Queensland. To be more specific, we live in River Heads. So that’s about 20 kilometres outside of Hervey Bay, and it has about 2000 people. Hervey Bay has got about 60,000 people, and it has a very large population of people with disability and who are old, and it has many big service provider organisations as well. So Isaac’s Band is competing for supports in amongst all of that.
And that’s our house right there. We’re very lucky. It’s a beautiful spot.
So Isaac lives with myself and my husband, David, who’s here today in our house in River Heads. We have a little granny flat underneath that we hang out in. Isaac rules the roost in the house upstairs. We do plan to have a house, a separate house for Isaac one day, but this is working nicely at the moment.
So I’ll tell you a little bit about Isaac’s life. He is a friend. This is his friend, Manon, who he met in Canberra, and we’ve maintained that relationship for about four years so far. She’s moved to Brisbane. She’s been up to visit Isaac, and Isaac had a little two-day holiday down in Brisbane and caught up with her there.
Here’s Isaac. He’s a gardener. There’s a community garden called Rainbow Gully Community Garden. He collects compost ingredients from around town, various places, and brings it along and puts it in the compost bin. And he just looks like one of the gang, doesn’t he? It’s really beautiful to watch when he’s there in that all the gardeners just grab him and say, come on, come with me. You can help me water the potatoes or whatever. It’s fantastic.
He’s also a fundraiser and recycler. So there is something called the Dunga Derby in Hervey Bay, which is an old… you get an old bashed up ute, and you go rallying around the wilds of Hervey Bay, and it raises money for local charities. So we’re looking at him raising money for that organisation.
He’s a gym member. So he goes to this fantastic gym that I also go to, although you probably can’t tell. And it is a very, very welcoming, inclusive place. And they focus on building relationships between participants and the gym, people training, trying to get fit and all of the others and all of the trainers as well. So it’s always, “Hi Isaac, how are you going?” Everybody knows him and he’s loving it.
He’s also a car owner. He’s very proud of himself having his own car. He loves riding in the car.
He is an assistant storeman. He works in the stores. It’s a voluntary role, not being paid yet, but we’re working on that one. He unpacks deliveries of soaps and deodorants and fly spray and all of the other things that they need.
He’s also a street library curator. So he goes around and takes books out and moves it onto the next one. We’d like to work on his literacy one day as well. That’s all part of the idea. And he’s tidying them up a little bit. We take some photos and post them on the particular Facebook group, and people are loving seeing Isaac helping them to spread the news about their street libraries.
So he has a number of other roles too, but I’ve only got a certain amount of time to talk about it. But anyway, he has lots of really great valued roles, which bringing him lovely connections in the community.
So this is our vision for Isaac’s life, that he is well-connected to the community and he lives a typical, purposeful and valued life that he has control of. And that’s kind of our one sentence version.
We also have very clear descriptions of what his vision for home looks like, what the vision for friendships and work and all sorts of other things. And that’s really strongly documented, and we’ve got it on our team and board collaboration tool called Podio. And we talk about it all the time, and we share it all the time. And so people are very aware of what it is and what we’re trying to do and why we’re trying to do it.
So just to give you an idea of the kind of support that Isaac needs, he needs 24-7 one-to-one support, and he needs some two-to-one support in the community to keep him safe. He likes to run on roads, which is not good. And you can’t say to him, “Isaac, can you just wait there while I go and pay to get in?” because he’ll have bolted off to find something more interesting than waiting for you.
He has inactive sleepovers, but we have the occasional, once every two or three weeks, a few nights of him being up and about and enjoying himself at two o’clock in the morning.
He needs support with communication. He uses alternative communication to communicate.
He requires personal care support, food preparation, meal management, homemaking support, friendship nurturing, and he does have some restrictive practice in a positive behaviour support plan, but that’s being reduced. We’ve got a really fabulous behaviour support person and a fabulous team, and he’s very happy. So, lo and behold, much less challenging behaviours for him being experienced because he’s enjoying himself in his valued roles.
So the risks to Isaac. The vision for Isaac’s life could fall into the hands of others that don’t understand or uphold it, denying him opportunities to learn, belong and live a purposeful, fulfilled life.
Changes in government funding arrangements reducing the ability to provide adequate levels of support. Well, this NDIS review is concerning us all, isn’t it?
Parents less able to fill gaps in the roster because me and David are getting old, and plus we’re retiring. So we want to go and travel, and we don’t want to have to be around to fill in gaps. So parents are less able to fill in the gaps in the roster, so requires reliable support or other natural unpaid supports to step in for emergencies.
Isaac’s vulnerable to the health system. A lot of people are. He’s vulnerable to a system that doesn’t know how to support Isaac to maintain his good health.
He’s not able to communicate well yet. Yet. Keep trying. He needs people to advocate and oversee support to prevent any abuse or… and enable his choice and control, and understand what his will and preferences are.
Risk of homelessness, because a common response to complex needs and behaviours is eviction.
A risk of being placed in a home with other people like him and becoming a victim of violence. And he’s experienced that as a young fella going to respite care, come home with bruises and broken arms and sunburn and terrible diarrhoea because he’s so stressed and anxious, and so we hate those places. And he’s unable to protect himself. He wouldn’t know what to do if someone came up and punched him in the nose. He’s just a very gentle, lovely soul.
Risk of wandering off, injuries or death if he’s not supervised well. We’ve had the police called out to find him a couple of times.
Supports not adequately trained to meet the complex support needs, resulting in Isaac not being able to achieve his goals of work, friends, learning and other goals that he has.
And difficulty in forming relationships without well-trained supports, and that could result in isolation, making him vulnerable to poor mental health and abuse.
Right, that’s the horrible stuff out of the way.
We’ve tried 11 service providers over the years, and not one were able to provide adequate support. Not even the basics. Not turning up, the wrong person, you know, 60 year old grandma to support 21-year-old Isaac to go to the pub.
Not trained in how to support Isaac. Some of them couldn’t make a bed.
Would be moved on after three months. After all of that training that I would do, we’d have to start all over again, nodding heads.
Pursuing goals wasn’t possible. Trying to help him to find work and, you know, support him to have a girlfriend, all of those things that was just beyond the capacity of the service providers that we have had access to, and it really was just babysitting.
Independent supports didn’t really work for us either. They’re often unavailable because they work for other people and couldn’t cover each other if one of them was away. They didn’t always take direction from me because they owned their business, and they, you know, they saw themselves as a consultant and the expert and didn’t always take my direction and felt that they could say no to some of the stuff that I wanted them to do.
They didn’t work well as a team because they’re competing with each other in their local market, and they didn’t like having to work with other people. I ended up having to be the team coordinator, so I couldn’t go anywhere. I was the one coordinating them because they wouldn’t coordinate each other. So that didn’t work either.
So, our Service for One was set up because… as a response to all of that rubbish.
So, basically it looks a bit like this. So up here in this big square, the top are the people that do the governance. So that’s the kind of the oversight. We sort of say, “We want this done”, and then we ask, ” Has it been done?” But we don’t do the doing. None of us do the doing. That’s down here in the management area.
So we have a team manager, and we’ve got a team that does all of the doing. I don’t do any rostering. I don’t do any payroll. I don’t do any of the performance management of staff. I don’t do any of that. The team manager does that and the team.
Some services for one, I’ve seen do self-managed teams, and they have an external consultant that comes in and coaches the team. That’s another way of doing it.
So I’m not doing all of the work. I sit up here on the board. I’m a director, and we have a board. So we hold the team accountable, but we’re not doing all of that doing.
So we are… our responsibilities are setting the vision, the values, the mission. We set the budget. We identify any big risks to the thing. These are the things that could stop us from achieving our mission of building a great life for Isaac. We set goals. We do a couple of planning meetings a year, and we oversee, make sure that all of the compliance stuff has been done.
Down here is all of that doing work that I don’t have to do. The team does it.
Let’s look at these risks and how the Service for One manages those.
So the risk around the vision for Isaac’s life could fall in the hands of others that don’t get it. So safeguards. The board is made up of people who know Isaac and his vision for his good life. So the people that know his vision are in charge. We set the rules. So we set the goals. We set the expectations of what the supports have to do. We’re in charge. The people that know and love him. So we’ve got family and friends who are on the board.
The board also has legal authority to hold supports accountable to achieving the vision. We hire and fire. The board is required in its constitution, the charter, the board’s policies and things like that to use supported decision-making techniques that include Isaac’s will and preference.
So whenever we make a decision, we always consider Isaac’s will and preference, and we always ask, well, how did you find out what his will and preference was? It’s very challenging because he doesn’t communicate well yet. So we often have to go, let’s try things and watch how he responds. We’re using just decision-making that’s around Isaac’s will and preference. So that’s the first risk.
So the second risk around funding. I’m hoping I’m going to have time to go through most of them. There may be some changes in government funding arrangements, and they’re all, always will be having NDIS reviews till now to the end of Isaac’s life.
So the safeguard is the board is responsible for that risk management. So planning what things could change and predicting what could go wrong and finding a way, finding a way around it. And those people know and love Isaac, and they’re friends and family and all of that.
So even if I’m dead and gone, there’ll still be people. Or if I’m in Africa on my safari, then there’s people there to figure out a way. Our board’s been involved in NDIS planning meetings, and they recently helped us through AAT. There’s more voices saying the same message. It’s not just mum saying, “We need this amount of funding.” It’s a whole board of people going, “Yes, we know Isaac really well. We can vouch for that, and we agree.”
So our AAT experience, although I wish we didn’t have to go, was very easy. We had two meetings, and they said, of course, you should have one-to-one. We just need this other document to tell us about why you need two-to-one. We produced that, oh, done, deal. So I don’t know if the board had anything to do with that. I’d like to think so.
Risk three, gaps in support. Parents less able to fill gaps in the roster. So our safeguards are the Service for One structure provides opportunity to control the factors that result in longer-lasting, more reliable supports. I’ll talk a little bit more about that in a sec.
It also provides a really attractive environment for supports. They love coming to work for us. Agencies, if you think about it, shift workers from person to person to person to person. They might work with four or five people for a couple of hours here, a couple of hours there. They get very little training. Don’t get to work with people on a very deep level often. Not always, but often. That’s the stories that I hear from supports that have come to us from an agency.
Independents have to manage their own business and find clients, and they find that sometimes very frustrating. And even if you charge the full rate and earn thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for not doing much, it’s not necessarily something that they want to keep doing because it’s hard work. And services for one provide opportunity for regular ongoing meaningful work on a very deep level.
So we can control all of these things that keep staff. So it isn’t just the money. So being mentored, challenged, promoted. What I mean by promoted is how we do that is we will give a particular support, something like finding clients for Isaac Delivers, which is his little delivery business, and managing that. They’re in charge of that in the team. So they’re given a leadership challenge.
Involved in the decision-making. So we do planning days with them, and they come up with lots of great ideas.
Appreciated. We do High five Fridays. So high five Fridays. We send around a little message to say, thank you for this. This is a great example of this particular value you’ve enacted, and we’re really grateful and thank you very much. And we might do the odd social thing or that sort of thing.
And listened to, we listen to them and their ideas and encourage their thoughts and suggestions.
They’re on a mission, so we’re very clear about our vision and very clear about goals, and we make them accountable to them. So they feel like they know where they’re going, and they’re working together as a team.
And they’re empowered. We provide lots of great training, and I’ve sent them off on SRV courses, and I’ve got Dr June Alexander coming up from Adelaide to spend a few days with the team on how to do systematic instruction so they can support Isaac to learn to do his job well and all sorts of other things.
And of course trusted; I do trust them. I don’t think I would hire someone that I didn’t trust.
So the Service for One model has allowed us to be able to control all of those things, which you can’t do with an agency, and sometimes you can’t do it with independents either.
So here he is with our fabulous team, and they tend to last about two and a bit years with us, which is not too bad. Some people have stayed longer, some people slightly less, but they tend to stay way longer than the average, which was about three months with the service provider.
Vulnerable to the health system that doesn’t know how to support Isaac to maintain his good health. It’s very difficult for Isaac to have any blood tests or even to look in his throat. He doesn’t go, ah, you know, so it’s very… and he’s terrified and anxious and just wants to run out the front door. So it’s scary when he has to go to hospital, very scary.
So we have his health directive and how he likes to be supported in hospital and what he hates and what he likes, all written down on Podio, our collaboration tool. So if a support worker needs to take him in, then it’s all there, and they can share it with the hospital. And any board members that are available, we’ve rung them up in the past, many times, and they come up and help advocate as well, so that it’s not just mum sat in the hospital for three days with no sleep.
So they’re our safeguards: Board members and well-trained supports monitoring and who monitor his health and know how to support him in hospital.
Communication: So Isaac’s not able to communicate easily. So we have purposely selected supports that we trust who are well-trained in alternative communication methods so that he can develop his communication skills over time. We have board members that come and spend time with him and check in, make sure that everything’s okay, talk to the staff. Just have a quick suss out of what’s happening, and they’ll let me know if anything’s worrying them.
When we’re away, we’ve got a board member that will come and be the emergency person. So they can ring her if the staff’s got any concerns.
The board to help check Isaac, help Isaac with decisions and using the supported decision-making techniques as well. So he’s been able to vote in elections and tell us what he thinks about some of our goals and ideas around his goals.
Okay. The risk of violence. This is a horrible one. Being placed in a group home with other people experiencing behaviours concern just like he does, and then becoming a victim of violence, and he’s not able to protect himself.
So we’re looking at having him living in his own home, and we’ve got the right support levels now, so that he does not have to go into a group home, and I will come back and haunt anyone who does.
Okay, risk eight, inadequate support ratios. So risk of wandering off, injuries or death if he’s not supervised well. So safeguards around that is the board is able to advocate to the NDIS, and that’s been very successful. And we set expectations around the roster of support. And so that the team leader knows, well, we need to… there’s discussions around when he needs the two-to-one and what keeps him safe. And, you know, is that necessary anymore? That’s often a discussion, because after he goes to somewhere enough, then he gets quite confident. He understands what he’s doing and the behaviours go, and it’s less of a risk. So we don’t need to roster two-to-one. And so we don’t. So that’s reliable, good quality support.
Okay, poor-quality supports; supports not being adequately trained to meet Isaac’s needs. So, as I’ve talked about, we’ve got the power to hire and fire, and we have good quality training, planning days to determine how to achieve Isaac’s goals. Supports are directly employed and held accountable to those goals. You’re not trying to bang on the door of service providers to try and make them.
So here’s Isaac with some of his team members. We did a big planning day. We had lunch together, and Isaac stayed the entire day, which was amazing. He seemed to love the space. He seemed to know what was going on. He heard his name lots of times. It was quite a nice fun day.
We gave them the goals, the board gave them the goals, we gave them the strategies. So strategies like SRV, person centredness, all of those, Janet Klees’s five P’s, all of those great strategies that you’ve probably heard of. I’ve trained them in those, and I’ve documented it, so they can train them, read through it, watch videos.
And then we have these planning days, and right, how are we going to implement this? And they plan out all of the tasks. And away they go. And it’s fantastic to hear those kitchen conversations about, I went and saw this guy the other day and it looks like he’s going to hire Isaac for Isaac Delivers. Oh, fantastic. That’s great. I’ve found this great opportunity that we can explore about him working at the local animal park and all of these sorts of great chats that are here in the kitchen. It’s fantastic.
All right. Risk 10, social isolation. Difficulty in forming relationships. So safeguards around that are supports are trained in how to support Isaac to build relationships.
The supports are accountable to the board. The board holds them accountable. They ask for data. How many new people has Isaac met this month? How many people have changed from being new people to potential friends that they’re showing interest in Isaac? How many potential friends have actually spent time with Isaac in a different new place? So they ask for data, which is really cool.
And the board, of course, connects Isaac to their networks. They’re always going right, I know some people that I can approach that Isaac might be able to deliver for. I’ll go and talk to them for you.
So Isaac’s very well connected already. We’ve only been there two and a bit years, and he knows lots of people, and I’ve joined a few groups myself, and I talk about Isaac all the time, and they go, ” Oh, you’re that Isaac’s Band. I’ve seen that on Facebook,” or “I’ve heard about that. That’s amazing. Oh, and I saw Isaac the other day. He was at the animal farm. He was feeding the kangaroos.”
So that’s really, really lovely to hear that because we’ve only been up there for a couple of years. So he is really starting to be well known, and I feel really relieved about that because I think someone would tell me if they were worried.
So there’s also risks to our family. Family breakdowns, mental health issues, 10 seconds or 10 minutes. I was going say mental health issues.
You probably experienced some of these: exhaustion, poor health, hard to keep a job. I’ve lost my job a couple of times because I couldn’t keep it up. Hard to keep your job, reduced opportunities to fulfil your own goals. Isaac’s siblings left to take on all the work if we were dead. There’s a lot of risks to us as well. It’s hard to sort of separate them. So the safeguards are our team leader and the team handles all the doing. So I’m free to come here and talk to you today.
And board members hold us, hold the team accountable and continue to do that when we can’t do it anymore or we cark it.
Isaac’s siblings are supported in the transition process when we die and will remain free to live their lives too. So Isaac’s got a brother here in Canberra, and a half-brother and half-sister who live in New Zealand, but the half-brother is coming over here to study and probably to join the Air Force. So there’s opportunity there too.
Ben has been on the board before. He’s not at the moment, but that’s okay. He sees all of Podio, our online collaboration tool. He sees what’s happening. He pipes in every now and then to say, ” Hey, have you thought about this? What’s going on with that?” So he’s keeping an eye on what’s happening. And I feel confident that he’ll be involved in some capacity when we’re not around anymore.
So David and I are very lucky to have such a fabulous team. So we’ve been able to go to New Zealand for two weeks. We are able to work on our own health. We’ve been going to the gym. We’ve been able to just be mum and dad and come down to Ben’s wedding. And Isaac joined us. He had a support worker that came with us and stayed for it with a couple of days in, with us in Canberra for the wedding. And it was fantastic.
I’ve taken up crochet. I love it. It’s really good fun. I’ve been able to start up my own business called the Good Life Builders, where I help other families to do this model.
And the last thing I want to share with you is a very brief overview of what you might need to do to set up a Service for One.
You’ll need a legal structure, you’ll need insurance, bookkeeper, you’ll need to be able to recruit staff, have contracts, position descriptions, tools for rostering, collaboration, payroll, accounting, implement a claiming process, training for staff, recruit board members. All very easy, hey.
There is a lot to do, but as fabulous Margaret Ward said, you know, “Step up, get help, and it’s a long-term thing,” and you’ll get there.
And the benefits, as I hope you’ve seen, have been amazing.
Getting started. So it’s not easy, but you can learn, get help, step up.
Prioritising a reliable, stable, good-quality team, that gives you freedom to work on all of the other things. Without the team, Isaac couldn’t have achieved goals around work. I used to go to all of these conferences and stuff and get all these amazing ideas and see these amazing stories.
And I’d come back to the service providers or the independents or these crappy supports that I had and go, “Now do it.” And they didn’t know what to do. And I was the one doing it all. So if you’ve got that team, you can do amazing things.
Setting up a board. So we just continually build relationships with people. We didn’t know anybody either when we went up to Hervey Bay, but we’ve joined clubs. We’ve joined the fishing club, the crochet club, the boat club.
We’ve set up our own club. We’ve set up something called Thirsty Thursdays, where we invite the neighbours over. They bring their chairs, and they bring their wine, and they bring their biscuits, and they’ve met Isaac, and then somebody else does it the next week, and off we go. And we take Isaac sometimes. He’s still learning about how to enjoy himself in other people’s places without getting upset. But he has definitely made some friends through that.
And we’re starting to talk about the board and introduce the idea of being on the board. And we’ve approached some people already, and we’ve got people on the board. And I’ve started recruiting people too, doing up on ad that works. Then the part of their role is to get to know Isaac, and we vet them like we would vet any staff. You know, we ask them all sorts of questions and we, you know, find out what kind of experience they’ve had working on boards and governance roles, that sort of stuff.
And we trial them as a non-executive. They come and see how we roll, come to meetings. They come and meet Isaac and the team. And we offer some training in how to be a board member and what the responsibilities are. They are… there are a lot of responsibilities, but it’s not onerous to meet them.
We’ve got our constitution to guide us. We’ve got our charter to guide us, how we behave, how we roll and what kind of values and beliefs that hold us and how we work together. And we have some policies as well.
And you don’t need to know it all. You can learn as you go, get help.
And here’s my little last slide. “Sheree Henley, born 13th of July, 1964, died 13th of July, 2064.” I’m gonna live to 100. My grandpop died at 104, so there’s a bit of a chance. “She lived life to the full and died knowing both her children are doing the same.” That is what I’m hoping for anyway.