Aged care services available to help your parents at home
Let's talk about in home care services available for seniors. The vast majority of people want to stay living in their own home for as long as possible. The sad reality is that many cannot stay in their homes as long as they would like because something happens, like a bad fall with serious injury that often removes this option.
The thing about falls, is that they often occur because of silly things that may have been prevented if there was some extra in home services in place.
This seems easy to fix, right, look for the in home aged care service you want and get it in place. Going to www.myagedcare.com.au is a great place to start the process. The government provides us with a lot of information there. However, there are a few things that you should know, that are not clear in the process, and it is this that I want to unpack today.
We get it, you are busy. You have your own family, a job, balancing a crazy covid world and you are trying to support your elderly parents as well. You want to get the best outcome for them and support them to get aged care services at home.
If you want government subsidised aged care services at home, you need to register with My Aged Care. They will register your parent and place the referral for assessment. Depending on what you say to the representative you will get either a Regional Assessment Service (RAS) or an Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT). You are not necessarily going to know which one initially. The former gives access to the lower level in home care services that are available eg. The Commonwealth Home Support Program (CHSP) and other community based services such as transport. The latter gives access to the Home Care Packages (HCPs), amongst other things, which is what most tend to think about when thinking about in home aged care services for seniors.
Why is this relevant?
It becomes really pertinent when we start thinking about the timeline between getting your assessment completed and getting the service in place. HCPs have a waiting list, sometimes 12 months or more. The assessors can only work with the details provided at the time of assessment. So often what happens is, assuming you get the right level of assessment in the first place, the service takes months to get and you need to do something to manage the gap.
This is when we typically see families get really stressed trying to provide the support themselves.
So what can you do?
Planning is really helpful, ideally before a crisis, we like to work with families to create their own tailored Staying at Home Plan. To do this, be really clear on the resources you have available; we include financial, time, physical and emotional resources. Anything is possible with enough resources; it can go pear-shaped if you are not upfront about the sustainability of these resources. Remember that sometimes it is a small thing that makes the biggest differences to quality of life and they may not be the obvious things.
We encourage you to check out page 8 of our ebook to find out some more detail about the aged care home services that might be available in your community.
If you have a question or want to explore your own situation, please go to our home page and schedule a call or send us an email.
Want to know more? Watch our 5 minute video below
Reproduced with permission of Family Aged Care Advocates
Download 10 aged care traps to avoid for your ageing parents
This article is of a general nature only. No specific person’s personal objectives, needs or financial situations were taken into consideration when creating the content for this article.
Family Aged Care Advocates Pty Ltd (ABN 77 642 454 484) are aged care specialists. You should seek qualified financial planning, taxation and legal advice before making any decisions that are unique to your circumstances. This article was prepared in good faith and we accept no liability for any errors or omissions.