How not to get ripped off by a Home Care Package

Getting the best outcomes from a home care package for your elderly parent, know if you are getting what you are entitled to by the selected aged care provider

You are busy but you have been able to get Mum a home care package and find a provider to deliver the service. The hard yards have been done right? Surely at this point you can relax and feel confident that Mum is getting the care and support she needs. Indeed, initially it may have felt like this was the case. However, you are starting to notice when you visit Mum that she doesn’t seem to be going as well as she was … you may notice she is a bit frailer, or having difficulty with activities she used to do easily. Maybe she is forgetting more things or her personal appearance is changed.

Surely you think, someone from the Home Care team will have recognised and responded to this? But as time rolls by there doesn’t seem to be any change and Mum continues to deteriorate. What should you do?

Call the Care Coordinator

We would recommend that in the first instance you contact the home care provider and you want to speak with the Care Coordinator who overseas your Mum’s home care package. A great provider will have systems in place where they have staff who recognise the deterioration and have a system in-house to escalate and respond to these concerns and reach out proactively. A great provider will be available to listen to your concerns and review your Mum’s care plan and adjust accordingly.

An unsatisfactory home care provider will not listen and not follow up with you, requiring endless calls on your part and may be unhelpful or unwilling to make changes to your Mum’s care service requirements.

Check the statement

We also recommend regularly checking the statement from the home care provider. They are obliged to provide a monthly statement which should clearly show what services have been delivered in the month, the cost of the services and the balance. There have been changes to how the government pays the home care packages to help reduce the large accrual of funds that had been occurring.

When you are checking the statement, you want to be reviewing the services that are reported as attended and ensure that indeed they were. Also consider if that is still relevant to your Mum’s current needs … or does Mum need more or something different now?

The Care Plan should NOT be put on the shelf

If Mum has had a change in needs, then the home care provider should review the Care Plan with yourself and Mum to determine what the new need(s) might be. These reviews should be done regularly regardless of any changes in care need … but they should certainly be done if a change has been identified.

You should then be provided with a copy of the Care Plan. Great home care providers should be proactive with this process and keep you informed and involved. Great providers will respond to your prompts for review and provide a copy of the Plan when asked.

Inadequate home care providers won’t provide you with an opportunity to review the care needs and update the care plan or provide you with a copy.

It is important to remember the Care Plan is the document that guides what you can use your home care package on. There needs to be an “assessed need” for a home care provider to approve and facilitate a service/product. There are rules around what these can be … but it is essentially a Consumer Directed Care model so if a need can be demonstrated and is important to Mum, then the provider should work with you to meet that need within the scope of the package. The provider should also be able to willingly and clearly explain to you why they cannot meet some requests if that is the case.

How Family Aged Care Advocates fit in …

If you are not sure if you are getting the right outcome for Mum and you want to run it past someone independently, give us a call to have a chat about your specific situation - click here to make a phone appointment

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.