Preparing when you have no participants yet

Plenty of providers apply for registration before they support anyone. Auditors deal with this regularly, and it does not put you at a disadvantage — provided you are honest about it and your systems are genuinely ready.

What auditors do instead

They shift from "show me what you did" to "show me what you would do". Expect questions such as:

• Walk me through what happens from a new participant's first phone call to their first shift
• Show me the forms you would use, and talk me through filling one in
• If something went wrong on a shift tomorrow, what would you do, and by when
• How would this person tell you they were unhappy

What to have ready

• Blank templates that work. Your service agreement, consent form, support plan, risk assessment and emergency plan should be usable as they are, with your business name and details, not a generic sample.
• Registers set up. Incident, complaints, risk, continuous improvement, conflict of interest, worker and training registers, ready to receive their first entry.
• Your own worker records. A sole trader is a worker. Complete your own induction record, training record, position description and policy acknowledgement.
• Evidence about you. Insurance, ABN and entity records, key personnel details and worker screening clearance.
• Evidence of preparation. Training you have completed, a self-review against the standards, and improvements you made as a result.

Be honest about it

Do not create records for participants you do not have, or backdate anything. It is easy to spot and it damages your credibility on everything else. Saying "we have not delivered supports yet, so here is how the system is set up and what I would do" is a perfectly good answer.

Once you start

Your first participant creates the first real evidence: a signed agreement, a support plan, notes, maybe a first entry in a register. Add them as they happen rather than reconstructing them later.