Enhanced Lifestyles is a disability services provider which offers in-home and community support services throughout South Australia. They are a recent winner of the 2017 Adapt Award for their innovative service delivery model and ability to adjust and shift within the ever-changing NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) environment.
Where most service providers are facing significant challenges with the full rollout of the NDIS commencing in South Australia, Enhanced Lifestyles is thriving in the new environment. Founded over 30 years ago by people with disabilities who wanted a service model of choice and control, Enhanced Lifestyles is perfectly aligned to the purposes and objectives of the NDIS. They are also charging below the NDIS benchmark pricing for 90% of their service offerings including all core supports. This means that their customers can maximise their NDIS plans and receive more supports than they would with other service providers, most of who are charging the maximum amount possible. 
Customers not only have complete choice and control over all aspects of their service including the times and days of service, they also select their Lifestyle Attendants (support workers). Customers are given a say in how their services run, they can choose to self-manage their rosters, contact their Lifestyle Attendants directly and even recruit their own staff.
Along with this commitment to offering real choice and control over services, the organisation has also taken a number of other steps to prepare for the NDIS which has held them in good stead over the past six months. There has been a huge investment in technologies and streamlining of administration processes. From discarding manual timesheets to an electronic system, plus changing payroll, billing and client management programs to ones which all communicate and transfer information to one another, administration costs are minimal compared to other similar organisations.
The most important step the organisation took in its NDIS preparation was becoming certified through Global-Mark in the Attendant Care Industry Standards. Enhanced Lifestyles went through the certification process in April last year and were awarded nine best practices with no recommendations provided in their first assessment.
Governance was an area that Enhanced Lifestyles truly excelled due to its unique model of being a customer-led organisation. Their Board is exclusively made up of the people who use the service, one of the only service providers in Australia to do so.
The certification process with Global-Mark enabled the organisation to create a quality system which truly compliments its service model of choice and control. It provides assurances that all policies, procedures and safeguards are in place to protect both the organisation and its customers now and into the future.
ACIA (Attendant Care Industry Association) have had a large hand in the creation of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Framework, which will be the new quality system to abide by in the NDIS. This has enabled Enhanced Lifestyles to be confident in its quality systems when the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Frameworks is implemented in July 2018.
Jodi McKay, Marketing and Communications Manager, Enhanced Lifestyles Incorporated
