5 ways AI can revolutionise Support Coordination

ChatGPT is more than an artificial intelligence chat bot. It can assess a written request and write its own answers. It pulls from its massive database, which has all the good info on the internet, minus most of the rubbish. But it doesn’t just copy text from the internet – it has a conversation with you. And right now, it’s free, though I don’t expect that to last. 

Some refer to it as Google on ‘roids or instant Cliff notes on everything.

How can Support Coordinators use ChatGPT right now?

Let’s get into the meat of 5 ways a Support Coordinator can use ChatGPT (and because I’m a tease, I’ll let you know we’ll be discussing more tips in our webinar next week).

#1: Report writing

This first tip? It’s a game changer.

 Ask ChatGPT:

‘Write a Support Coordination report outlining why [ fake first name of participant] who is [x] years old, living with [x disability] in [living situation] with a goal of [goal] needs [insert support description here]. Please use the requirements of Section 34 of the NDIS Act and address each one individually. Also outline the benefits to the participant AND the NDIS of funding [insert support description here] as well as the risks of not providing [insert support description here].’

The results are, frankly, terrifyingly good (see example).

Imagine using that to help a participant with an S100 Internal Review!

#2: Case notes

I’m a writer, but case notes are hard work, particularly if grammar and spelling aren’t your jam. It’s challenging to write them sensitively (assuming you send them all to the participants/nominees) and professionally, without judgement. For some Support Coordinators, it’s hard to write them succinctly too.

 So ask ChatGPT:

"Here are my meeting notes. Can you please turn them into numbered bullet point professional case notes, without judgement.”

And hey presto!!! And a further tip – ask it to rewrite them as an email in plain English to send to the participant. It’s like… like… magic!

#3 Service agreements

 Copy and paste a service agreement into ChatGPT – either your own or another provider’s. You’ll need to do this in chunks as ChatGPT will generally only deal with up to a few thousand words at a time. Ask it to ‘Rewrite this in plain English.’ BOOM!

#4 Making sense of NDIS information

Copy and paste chunks of the NDIS website and ask ChatGPT: ‘What does this mean for a participant who is 23 years old, living with autism level 3 in their parent's home with a goal of “improving my independence and giving my parents a break from caring for me”?’ You can then forward the answer (AFTER you’ve carefully reviewed and edited it!) to the participant/nominee.

#5 Ideas

Stuck for an inclusive activity or relationship building idea for a participant? I told ChatGPT ‘I want ideas for ways for a 23-year-old living at home can make friends. She is a budding artist, fairly introverted and is into anime, roller skating and cats.’ Here’s what happened.

An answer is only as good as the prompt

Like any technology – including Google – if you put in search terms without much info, you’re going to get rubbish results. Looking for a paediatric OT in Gosford? Just search for ‘OT’, and you’ll get about 3,360,000,000 results. But search for ‘paediatric OT in Gosford autism mobile’, and you’ll narrow that down to 245,000 😉

There are some key ways to improve your prompts:

1. Ask ChatGPT to ‘tell me more’ or ‘continue’ if you don’t get enough detail or just want more!

2. ChatGPT loses its thread after about 4000 words and will forget the start of your conversation. Rather than writing a new prompt, go back and edit an earlier one to refine the information you’re looking for.

3. ChatGPT is *VERY* fluent in many languages – far superior to google translate. While you will want a native speaker to review any translations, it can be super useful for quick translations.

4. ChatGPT can analyse data, and if you ask, it will put information into tables for you.

So get creative about how you ask things and refine your requests until you get the answers you’re looking for.

Risk and pitfalls

And here are a few of the pitfalls and potential danger zones when using ChatGPT:

1. Privacy and security. This is huge – don’t put ANY personally identifiable information or commercially sensitive information into ChatGPT. If you are asking it to interpret reports or plans, make sure you remove any identifiable information.

2. ChatGPT gets things wrong sometimes – YOU need to be the human who fact checks, carefully reads and corrects.

3. ChatGPT sometimes gets the maths wrong – CHECK IT!

4. ChatGPT stopped collecting internet info in late 2021, so it’s not a source of up-to-date information or a place to search for providers.

 There are so many ways for Support Coordinators to use ChatGPT to save time, generate ideas and write more clearly . This article is really just a teaser – we’ll go through a bunch more in our upcoming webinar.

And to round up, I asked ChatGPT to write me a poem about it and the NDIS. Maybe a poet’s job isn’t quite at risk yet…