Customer Stories
Community Living Association (CLA) takes educated leap into Centro QMS
We recently caught up with the team at Community Living Association (CLA), one of WA’s leading NDIS registered providers of high quality, person-centred services, and community support for people with disability. Over 30 years, they have grown into a diverse not-for-profit organisation that offers a broad range of services including Positive Behaviour Support and Accommodation across the Great Southern region.
CLA employs over 150 passionate staff and engage with numerous dedicated volunteers and it’s clear that they are committed to people-focused values of certainty, esteem, excellence and compassion. They know how to have fun too! This is evident in the photos and stories in their ‘Community Matters’ Newsletters.
The heart of the organisation
Russell Nelson, Chief Executive Officer, shares “the educated leap into Centro QMS has allowed us to replace the arduous paper-based training process with a streamlined avenue to conduct most of the theoretical training for employees, board members and volunteers.” He believes it’s Centro’s policies and processes, coupled with the online Knowledge Test module that assists CLA to achieve this outcome.
“Our employees are the heart of the organisation and as such, we are committed to providing them with extensive training enabling staff to perform their duties in accordance with the NDIS practice standards and quality indicators.”
Policies written with end-user in mind
During our chat, Russell shares his experience with Centro’s policies. He acknowledges that the supplied policies are a great foundation, but the homework still needs to be done at the business level to make it their own. It is not a set and forget process and the content needs to be owned by each individual organisation.
“The policies are written so well, and they are so professional. We have peace-of-mind that all the policies address everything within the NDIS.”
Centro’s auditing tool
Vicki Corpus, CLA’s Chief Business Officer, who looks after internal auditing for the business understands how internal audits can be very daunting and a time-consuming process. Two years on, CLA have successfully inducted over 150 people and performed numerous internal audits by utilising the Centro QMS web-app.
“During our recent external audit, we were able to provide the Auditor with remote access to our Centro platform to view our internal audit schedule, completed audits and supporting documentation.”
Vicki confirms that “Centro’s Internal Audit module has helped make the whole process more efficient and effective.” The latest Internal Audit release with an ‘evidence column’ has proved invaluable to her and the team. Vicki states, “it gets us thinking about what proof and evidence is required.”
She continues to explain how CLA even upload their own internal audit templates into Centro QMS, demonstrating how its beneficial for the whole business.
"We’ve even got our IT guys doing their own audit on Cyber Security, and using the supplied templates is worth its weight in gold.”
ISO Auditor Experience
The CLA team explain that they don’t just get audited by NDIS, that they also have ISO external audits. Here, Vicki provides temporary Centro QMS access to the ISO auditors to view their internal audits. She speaks of a particular instance where the ISO auditor was ‘new’ to Centro and she instructed him to “just click on whichever internal audit you wish to open.” Here, all the evidence was housed and loaded.
He responded “Fantastic, well done. You’re miles ahead of anyone else.”
Ongoing support
Vicki recounts the initial setup and shares that it was “mostly smooth sailing, thanks to the software navigation and instructions being straightforward.” She credits the Support Portal and Knowledgebase articles, both easily accessed within the Centro web-app.
Vicki states, “it’s also refreshing to have the availability of 1:1 support from the Centro team, ensuring prompt answers or solutions when required. Support emails are usually responded to within 24 hours.”
“The ongoing interactive webinars provide additional support for implementing new segments on Centro too.”
CEO to CEO advice
We discovered in our catch up that Russell meets with WA CEOs every few months. There was a shared business pain of ensuring that policies and procedures remain in line with NDIS, as well as the burden of conducting internal audits and self-assessments in paper form.
Russell concludes with some sound advice to other CEOs;
“With Centro, you’ve got a team of experts that are writing these policies and processes. They know the NDIS. This then translates across into the internal audit templates and houses it all together. Everything is linked and is easily accessible. I highly recommend it.”
If you’re ready to discover a flexible, cloud-based QMS solution tailored to disability and aged care providers, book a demo today.