Specialized Services Portal (SSP)

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The Specialized Services Portal (SSP) is an online system for Service Providers to document and manage the delivery of services to children and youth in their care. 

• Specialized Services Portal User Guide For Program Managers and Administrators (PDF, 3MB) updated March 1, 2025
• Specialized Services Portal User Guide For Care Providers (PDF, 2MB) updated March 1, 2025
• Infographic for As Needed Amounts  (PDF, 112KB) added March 7, 2025

 

 

Service Providers and their staff will be onboarded to the Specialized Services Portal at the time of contract initiation. 

Should a Service Provider need to remove a staff person’s access to the Specialized Services Portal:

• If a staff member is still working with the Agency (their BCeID is still being used for other work) but their SSP access needs to end: 
  • Email MCF.SHSSsystemsupport@gov.bc.ca and identify the name and user ID for the person to be removed 
• If a staff person’s access to the SSP needs to be immediately removed: 
  • Deactivate or delete their BCeID by following the steps on page 34 -37 of the user guide https://www.bceid.ca/files/public/AccountProfileManagementGuide.pdf

March 1, 2025

The Specialized Services Portal (SSP) is an online system for Service Providers to coordinate and document the delivery of services to children and youth receiving care within SHSS resources.  Key components of the SSP include referrals and placements, an ability to request supplemental funds for individualized care, and service planning for children and youth.  An important by-product of the SSP is achievement of documentation and reporting requirements outlined in your contract with MCFD. 

As you know, we are continuing to iterate on the SHSS functionality within all our systems and on February 28 - March 1, the next iteration of the build to the Specialized Services Portal (SSP) was deployed alongside updates for Ministry staff in their integrated systems.

As we continue our build, we have been taking feedback from users of these systems as well as reported incidents and are happy to announce that several enhancements are now live.  As we move forward, it is important that you as Service Providers are using all parts of the SSP to document SHSS Service Plans, Progress Reviews, Monthly Check-Ins, Daily Logs and SHSS Care Circles and are submitting requests for your supplemental funds in a timely manner.  Doing so will help to meet performance and contract requirements as well as ensure we are testing and improving our new systems as effectively and efficiently as possible.

 

Resources and Support:

Please refer to the UPDATED Specialized Services Portal (SSP) User Guides on the Specialized Homes and Support Services: Service Provider Learning Site for detailed information on how to use the new functionalities you see in this communication.

Note:  We recommend bookmarking these links rather than downloading copies, as these resources are living documents that are updated as required.

Experiencing unexpected Portal behaviour or need help with the SSP?

• Contact SHSS Systems Support at MCF.SHSSSystemSupport@gov.bc.ca or

1-855-835-6233

Visit the webpage below for Learning Resources related to your role as an SHSS Service Provider:

• Specialized Homes and Support Services: Service Provider Learning Site - Province of British Columbia (gov.bc.ca)
• Join a SHSS Systems Support drop-in session:

Sessions run every Wednesday from11-11:30am

Click here for calendar invite

• Contact your resource worker if you need additional information you cannot find on the Learning Site.

Thank you for your continued partnership and for helping us build and enhance the Specialized Services Portal. We look forward to your ongoing feedback and collaboration.

 

New Functionality/Features:

Functionality:	Description:
Administrator Profile	A new profile assignment is required for all Service Providers. Administrators act on behalf of their organization and ensure all users in the portal are assigned to the Places of Service in which they work. Administrators can perform all the same functions as Program Managers but also have vision across all the organization’s Places of Service and the Employee Assignment functionality.
Visibility and Privacy Enhancements and Information Sharing	Users with Program Manager and Portal Worker profiles in the SSP must now be assigned to the Places of Service in which they work. This will ensure that they can view and edit child/youth information relevant to their role within their assigned Places of Service but they will not be able to view or edit information for children/youth placed at other SHSS Places of Service.  This ensures both essential information sharing and protection of private information of children and youth. NOTE: if a User cannot access any child/youth information as expected when they sign into the portal as of March 2, 2025, please have the person that is identified as your organization’s Administrator check to see that they are assigned to the appropriate Places of Service.  Use the User Guide for Administrators and Program Managers found here: Specialized Services Portal (SSP) User Guides
Event and Task Enhancements	Enhancements have been made to ensure that Events that need to be related to a Child’s SHSS Service Plan are properly associated to the plan to enable backend reporting for contract deliverables. Enhancements to ensure that Respite Stays are properly associated with a child/youth’s Request for Service so that information regarding respite stays is successfully integrated into a child/youth’s case in ICM.
SHSS Service Plans - auto close	SHSS Service Plan status will automatically update to Closed 10 days after a placement has ended.  A notification will be received in the SSP when a placement ends to remind the Service Provider to ensure that the SHSS Service Plan documentation is up to date before the plan closes as it will no longer be editable after 10 days. This will ensure that there are not multiple In-Service SHSS Service Plans for children or youth who may have moved to another SHSS Service Type or location, as well as ensure that child/youth information does not remain editable after service has ended.
Monthly Check-In enhancements	Progress on partially completed Monthly Check-Ins can be saved When a Monthly-Check In is complete and ready to be sent to a Child Service Case in ICM, click Finalize and Send. Confirmation will appear indicating that the Monthly Check-In was successfully created and sent to ICM.
Additional Support Requests	Clarified language/descriptors of Additional Support Request Types and Sub-types Addition of Legacy Transition-In Approved Funding as a Request Type for SHSS Legacy contracts Addition of Cultural Supports as a sub-type of Child Specific Support Enhanced information regarding Staffing related requests including capturing Position, hours worked and grid level All request types can be one time only or monthly recurring payments One Time Only Additional Support Requests can now be submitted when a placement or agreement has ended (request start and end dates must fall within the active placement and/or contract dates). Request Start and End dates must reflect the period of time the expense was incurred/service provided to ensure that requests fall within the active contract and/or placement dates and that the expenses are linked to the appropriate year of the Service Provider agreement. Additional Support Requests may be backdated as long as these requirements are met. All Additional Support Requests must be related appropriately to their Request Type and Sub-Type and requests must be for one type of expense per request.  This will provide clarity around what is being requested and paid out as well as better quality reports for expense/expenditure management, financial reporting, etc.
Update to Respite Stay logic	Respite stays can be confirmed, edited, or added after a respite placement ends. Respite Stay dates must be within the placement start and end dates.
Payment Summary enhancements	Added the CAS Payment Number and the ICM Order Number to the payment summary so that if Service Providers need to contact MCFD Finance for information/questions about a payment, they can provide these details. The ICM order number will be hyperlinked. When clicked, further payment details are visible. Payment Summaries will now be updated daily instead of monthly.

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AUGUST 12, 2024

We are continuously improving the SHSS functionality across all our systems. Over the weekend of August 10-11, we deployed the latest iteration of the Specialized Services Portal (SSP).

As we continue our development, we have been incorporating feedback from system users and are pleased to announce that enhancements are now live. Moving forward, it is crucial for Service Providers to utilize all aspects of the SSP to document SHSS Service Plans, Progress Reviews, Monthly Check-Ins, and Daily Logs, as well as to submit requests for supplemental funds promptly. This will help you meet your contract requirements and ensure we test and improve our new systems as efficiently as possible.

Resources and Support

Please refer to the updated User Guides linked above for detailed information on how to use the new functionalities.

Please Note: We recommend bookmarking these links rather than downloading copies, as these resources are living documents that will be updated as needed.

Monthly Check-in

• Increased character length in Comments section of each question (3000 characters)
• Date field marked as required to prevent integration error

Daily Logs

• Increased character length (50 MB)
• Logs are now editable and can be added to by multiple users i.e. staff working the same shift who would like to add to the shift log.

Please Note:  The Service Provider can choose to use combined logs or separate logs for each user.

Service Plans

• Character limit increased in service plan activities, clinical service details, non-clinical service details, strategy description (4000 characters)
• Status can no longer be edited by the Service Provider except to close Service Plans when children/youth leave the placement
• Alignment of character length between portal and ICM
• All required fields are now marked as mandatory
• If the SHSS Service Plan is not approved by a Primary Professional, then the status will update to “Closed”.  If an update is required, clone the plan to update as needed.
• SHSS Care Circle members will now be copied to cloned SHSS Service Plans so they will not need to be re-added to the new plan.

SHSS Care Circle

• Active/inactive status functionality has been added including the ability to add dates members are added to or leave the SHSS Care Circle.

Additional Support Requests

• An attachment is no longer mandatory when submitting a payment request
• It is now possible for the MCFD finance worker to cancel an upcoming Additional Support payment if this is needed because a payment request was created and approved by mistake or needs to be revised.
• An Additional Support Request can be submitted when the placement is in “interrupted” status
• Warning message occurs if a user tries to submit a $0 or blank payment request

Transition-In Payment Logic

• Transition-In payments can now be paid before or after regular service payments start when Transition In ends and children/youth are placed in the home

Payment Summary

• Contract number on the payment summary will now be the contract number from as shown on the SHSS agreement (SHSSxxxxxxxxxx) to make the payment summary more meaningful.

SSP Access for service Providers with SHSS and FCC Contracts

• Service Providers that hold contracts with both Family Connections Centres and SHSS now have access to both sides of the Specialized Services Portal.