Want More Referrals from Support Coordinators? Here's What They Screen For

Coordinators rarely explain why they have selected one service provider over another, making it difficult to know what to change.

So we asked them. The following is what they say they'll be screening when they're creating a short list for someone, and at the end, there's a free kit with the templates to implement this week.

📋  The short answer: nearly all of it is administrative and all of it can be easily corrected quickly. Very little of it is what providers assume.

They're Not Assessing Your Support Quality

It's a surprise to people, so it's important to say it clearly. From the outside, a coordinator cannot get a good idea of the quality of your support. They don't know your practice, your culture, how your staff deal with an evening gone wrong.

What they see is how you behave as an organisation, whether you respond, whether your information is accurate, whether you're honest about fit. So they accept those as a proxy for everything else, as it's all they've got; and, in fairness, it's usually a decent one. Organisations that pay attention to the small visible things tend to pay attention to the invisible ones as well.

Which basically translates to this: the things that get you shortlisted are almost all administrative. That's good news. Administrative issues can be resolved swiftly.

What They Actually Screen On

Whether you answer.  This happens first, each time. A coordinator assisting with a housing transition is typically dealing with a plan review date, a family in crisis and a person in an unsuitable situation. They'll call multiple people at the same time and the discussion will centre on the first person who calls back with something useful in the first couple of days. No-one is ranked here. It's only that by the time another reply comes in, the shortlist will have been formed.

Whether your vacancy information can be trusted.  A coordinator who asks you about a room and finds out it was already filled in March doesn't get upset, they quietly stop relying on your listings. The one most cost effective credibility signal is dating your vacancy page.

Whether they can picture the household.  This is the one coordinators raise most often as missing. They're putting someone in a house that has other people in it and they want to know if it will work for them and the people already living there. A description of 4 bedrooms, ducted air conditioning and close to shops does not answer any of that. What helps here is the general nature of the household, the age spectrum, the broad support profile, whether quiet and routine or high-energy and social, what a typical weekday evening is like.

Whether your registration status is obvious.  Now that the rule to register for SIL has been enforced, coordinators are checking. It is their professional duty to refer to providers who meet quality and safety requirements, and most will confirm status at an early stage. Making it easy to find is a courtesy that gets rewarded.

Whether you'll tell them the truth about fit.  Several coordinators described the same thing as the strongest trust signal a provider can give: being told “honestly, I don't think this one's right for her, and here's why.” It costs the provider a placement and buys them a relationship, because it tells the coordinator that a yes from that provider means something.

Whether you're still there in six months.  Coordinators refer to who's front of mind. Frequency is a better indicator of front of mind than a good first meeting. Just a short update a few times a year, with news of the vacancies and anything new, is sufficient. Most providers do it once and then forget about it.

The Pattern

🔑  All of those items on that list are indicators of reliability and not ability.

That's worth sitting with, as providers tend to invest in showing quality, the model, the philosophy, the outcomes, to an audience who can't check any of it, and who's assessing something completely different.

The providers whose houses stay full aren't usually the ones with the most advanced support model. They're the ones who are easy to work with, and who make the coordinator's hard job easier on the day it counts.

Where To Start

If you're only changing one thing this month, make it a named owner for referral enquiries and a response standard that your team can apply.

If you change two, post a date on your vacancy page.

If you change three, create a general description of each of your households, with your residents' agreement, and place it where it can be found by a coordinator. The third one takes the most thought and that's the one that will most impact the number of times you get shortlisted.

A complimentary kit from Support Network

📥  We compiled the items that coordinators told us they wanted providers to have: a template for listing vacancies, a format for a household profile with a worked example, a brief template to give to coordinators every quarter, and two one-page checklists, one for before someone moves in and one for anything you publish. Designed for use with SIL. It is free, to be used in any way you want, just an email address.

Download The Kit

→  supportnetwork.com.au

Questions, or looking to let us know about a vacancy? Send an email to Michelle (michelle@supportnetwork.com.au)