All about sessions

This article will attempt to answer any questions you might have about sessions for financial mentoring, MoneyMates and no-shows.

We will look at what the MSD guidelines say, and attempt to summarise it.

Financial mentoring

Here is an excerpt from the Building Financial Capability Service Guidelines 2021:

“The contracted volume measure for Building Financial Capability services is ‘sessions’.

 

 A session is defined as substantial strengths-based support for a client that includes a meeting with them. This is represented as an indicative three-hour time period, which includes both contact and non-contact time. Non-contact time might include research, training, administration and/or liaison with colleagues and other agencies.”

To MSD, a session is an indicative three-hour time period. This period is made up of:

• Face to face strengths based support (roughly one hour)
• Any other non-contact work for that client (roughly two hours):
  • Research
  • Training
  • Admin
  • Liaison with colleagues and other agencies

Three hours is the time that MSD estimate it takes for a service to complete this block of work. But a session doesn’t have to equeal exactly three hours of work.

“BFC services should be oriented towards achieving client-led results. This is based on providers using their discretion over the use of the indicative three-hour time period to achieve the best client-led results. There is no contractual obligation to record non-contact time.”

For example, you see a client for one-hour face to face, then spend another hour on admin and negotiating with creditors. It only took you two hours to complete the work, but you can still count that as one completed session. It would be the same if the work took more than three hours.

Read: How to record a session

No-shows

MSD ackowledges that a lot of work goes into preparing for a face-to-face appointment with a client.

“The Building Financial Capability service model is based on sessions which include client time and administration time. The demand for Building Financial Capability services is expected to be high, and the Ministry expects that ‘no show’ spots will be used to complete administration tasks that are funded as a part of a session, or filled with another client if possible.”

When a client fails to show up to their appointment, a lot of effort is wasted.

“We understand that last-minute cancellations and ‘no shows’ are unavoidable, and it can be very hard to fill this session space. We also recognise that a ‘no show’ would require less than the full session time available. While there is likely to be some face-to-face time lost, there could be pre- and post-appointment work required. Therefore, any cancellation or ‘no show’ that occurs within 24 hours of the session will be quantified at 50% of the full session rate (i.e. 1.5 hours), reflecting the pre- and post- appointment work required. For reporting purposes, a completed session equals two ‘no shows’. This should be supported by details of ‘no shows’ in your Provider Return narrative report.”

MSD estimates that a no-show to be roughly half the work compared with if the client had shown. No-shows are therefore worth half a session.

If you’re recording your sessions in client voices, log a no show as 0.5 sessions.

Read: Record a no-show

MoneyMates

Here is an excerpt from the MoneyMates A Guide for Facilitators book:

“MoneyMates is funded with a ‘session’ as the purchase unit.

A session is made up of approximately three hours of staff time applied to MoneyMates. These three hours can be split between face-to-face group meetings and non-contact time for research, preparation, or recruiting participants. The ratio will be around one-third contact time and two-thirds non-contact time – whatever works for you.

 

Each MoneyMates meeting is counted as one session.

 

If the number of clients in the group grows so that two facilitators are needed, this can be counted as two sessions.”

Summarised, a MoneyMates session is a one-hour face-to-face meeting plus roughly two hours of preparatory work.

If you have to have a second facilitator, you can add another session on top of that.

Read Record a MoneyMates course.

Read about MSDs guidelines for BFC providers.