What to give a new support worker in week one

What this page is not

This is not a provider shift handover.

If the worker is employed or contracted through an organisation, that organisation still owns rostering, incident reporting, medication records where they apply, and its own induction. Do not replace those with a family document. Do not fight them with a family document. Give the piece their system often never holds: the current picture around this person, this week.

This is also not what to send the new OT. An OT needs the goal for the visit and one current letter. A support worker needs the standing instruction they will use six times before Friday.

It is not a clinical history, a behaviour plan you are not authorised to write, or an emergency plan. If someone may be unsafe, do not wait for week-one reading. Use the agreed emergency or safeguarding channel.

What not to give in week one

Do not hand over the archive because it is what you have.

A new worker does not need every old report, every expired goal, and the story of why the last provider ended. A pile that large gets skimmed. The one current “please don’t” gets lost in it.

Leave out:

• The full NDIS plan as a default onboarding pack
• Budget pages, nominee disputes, or funding arguments
• Full history “for context”
• Other workers’ progress notes, complaints, or private numbers
• Clinical detail a worker is not there to hold
• The family group-chat history
• Passwords, portal logins, or gate codes that should not live in a take-home photocopy
• Anything the participant has not agreed this worker should see

What belongs on the one-pager

Five fields. One page. Fridge-level. Write it so it still works if it is stuck on the fridge, saved as a photo, or read in the car before the first shift. If a sentence would not help in the next two hours, it does not belong here.

1. Who is at the centre — a few lines

Name they use. How they communicate on a first shift. Who will be in the house or community with them. Not a biography. Not a diagnosis essay.

2. How this week should run

The actual support they are here to deliver: morning routine, community access on Wednesday, meal prep, the after-school pick-up. One short picture of a usual shift this week. If the roster already says the task, add only what the roster cannot say.

3. Do, and do not, that is current

Only the standing instruction that would change how they act. Transfers, fatigue, sensory load, food, communication, the door that is not used anymore, the thing that looks helpful and is not. If nothing in that list is current, write “no special protocol this week — please ask on the day.”

4. Who to call, and for what

Family or nominee contact for this week. Provider supervisor if that is the worker’s line. The agreed emergency path. One name each. “Anyone in the chat” is not a name.

5. What to tell someone after the shift

Only what the team actually needs back: a change in the routine, a new “do not,” something waiting, or “nothing to report.” Do not ask a new worker for a novel. Do not make them the family’s case-note system.

Week one is not day one

Day one is the door, the routine, and who to call.

The rest of the week is whether the picture stays current:

• Did the “do not” change on Wednesday
• Did a new piece of equipment arrive
• Is the Thursday outing still on
• Who owns the follow-up if something did not work

Who should write it

Default: the Team leader — the person trusted to hold the current picture. That is often a parent, a partner, an adult sibling, or a nominee.

If the participant can and wants to write it, they should. The point is one current page, not a particular family member performing it forever.

A support coordinator can help pull the page together. They should not be the only person who knows what is on it.

The provider may already issue a support plan or a client profile. Read that. Do not write a second page that disagrees with it in silence. If the family picture and the provider profile say different things, fix the disagreement before Monday. Two current pictures is how a new worker gets two first shifts.

Do not send two versions — one from the coordinator, one from the family, one from an aunt. One page. Dated.

After the first week

You do not rewrite the novel with a new cover.

The useful update is four lines:

• What changed
• What is current now
• What is waiting
• Who owns the next step

Before you share the page with a worker

Share the smallest useful set.

The participant, or the person with authority to decide, chooses what this worker sees. An old behaviour report, another family’s email, or the plan PDF is not automatically part of week one.

If you are unsure whether a file belongs on the fridge, it does not.

This page does not replace consent processes, a service agreement, the provider’s induction, or an emergency plan.

If you want that sitting somewhere other than the fridge

The one-pager works on paper. That is enough.

If the same five fields keep getting rewritten every time a new worker or casual starts, that is the gap a shared workspace is for: current instruction, who to call, what is waiting, latest labelled file — invite-only, around one person.

In Kinovo those fields already have a home, without turning week one into a reconstruction job:

• Who is at the centre, and how they communicate, sit in the shared profile. That is a short current picture, not a medical record.
• The standing do / do not can sit as a Care Protocol — current practical guidance, with an owner and a review date. It is not a behaviour plan, a medication system, or a substitute for professional advice.
• What matters this week can sit as a goal.
• Anything the worker must send back can sit as a task: one owner, what a useful response looks like.
• The one-pager or a supporting file sits in the private library, labelled and dated. Each file has its own visibility preset. Linking a file to a goal or task does not widen who can open it.