What is a risk-assessed role?
Registered NDIS employers are responsible for identifying which roles are risk-assessed roles, and ensuring all workers in these roles have an NDIS worker screening clearance.
A risk-assessed role is:
- a key personnel role (for example, a CEO or a board member)
- involved in the direct delivery of specified supports or services to a person with disability
- is likely to require ‘more than incidental contact’* with people with disability, which includes:
- physically touching a person with disability
- building a rapport with a person with disability as an integral and ordinary part of the performance of normal duties, or
- having contact with multiple people with disability as part of the direct delivery of a specialist disability support or service, or in a specialist disability accommodation setting.
* Contact can be physical, face-to-face or oral, written or electronic communication.
Example 1: Clearance required
Lee works for a registered NDIS provider that delivers mobility equipment to the homes of people with disability. As a standard part of that role, he provides training and instructions to the customer about how to use the equipment safely and makes adjustments to the equipment to make it suitable for the customer. Lee needs to have a NDIS worker screening clearance. This is because:
- the nature of Lee’s contact with people with disability it’s likely to involve a level of openness and trust, such as testing the person’s needs and preferences, and talking about and responding to the nature of their disability
- it’s likely Lee will build a rapport with his customers.
Example 2: Clearance not required
Sue is an accountant who works in the back office of a registered NDIS provider that supplies custom prosthetics to people with disability. Sue often has incidental contact with people with
disability while she is moving through public areas of the business, such as when she walks through the lobby, at which time Sue nods and says hello to the customers. Sue does not need a NDIS worker screening clearance (or an acceptable check under the transitional and special arrangements) because:
- her role does not involve the direct delivery of custom prosthetics
- she is not required to have more than incidental contact with people with disability
- her role does not require her to have more than polite, functional contact with people with disability, or to get to know them in any way.