Frequently Asked Questions
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Costs, Fees & Funding
Costs vary based on the services you need. We charge a flat 17% rate for self-managed care and a 20% rate for fully managed care. During your free care assessment and consultation with The CareSide, your Care Manager will develop an individualised care plan with you and provide a budget for required services. You can read more about our pricing here.
We developed proprietary software to streamline our administrative processes wherever possible. This means we don’t need to charge exorbitant fees to cover our operating costs and can pass those savings back to you. To learn more about how we keep our rates low without compromising the quality of our services, click here.
No, you are not locked into a contract. We are a flexible service, meaning you can receive as much or as little care as you like on the days and times that you choose. We do ask you to sign an agreement that details how your care services are delivered. This is legally required by The Aged Care Act. You can cancel your agreement at any time without penalty or any exit fees.
No, we do not charge daily basic fees.
The government asks for income-tested fee contributions from people who can afford them to make the system sustainable for all Australians. That’s why income-tested fees (ITFs) are different for everyone—they’re based on individual incomes and capped on an annual and lifetime basis.
Not everyone has to pay income-tested fees, but if you do, it goes directly toward your care. Although the Australian Government determines ITFs and their amounts, your Home Care Package provider collects them on behalf of Services Australia. In other words: income-tested fees are not charged by your home care provider. There is a fee estimator on the My Aged Care website which can help you ascertain whether you will be required to pay an income-tested fee. Learn more about income-tested care fees.
Once your Home Care Package is approved, you will submit income and asset details to Services Australia so they can complete their means-tested assessment. If Services Australia determines that you are a candidate to contribute income-tested fees, they will notify you and your home care provider via mail. This communication includes the date for which the income-tested fee has been applied; in most cases, the fee is backdated to the date the Home Care Package was approved. Generally, it takes Services Australia 6-12 weeks to complete their determination.
At The CareSide, we will inform you immediately via your preferred method of communication and request to commence payments at your preferred frequency (weekly, fortnightly or monthly) via direct debit. Alternatively, you can opt for monthly invoicing, in which case The CareSide will invoice in arrears at the beginning of every month. If a back payment is required, you will be contacted to confirm your preferred payment—either lump sum payment or payment plan.
Remember: Income-tested care fees go directly toward your care, and they are not charged by your home care provider. Your provider simply collects them on behalf of Services Australia.
Whether you can retain your CHSP funding is up to the discretion of the CHSP provider. However, for social support, CHSP funding often continues, as specified by My Aged Care:
“Clients on a Level 1 to 4 package who have transitioned from the CHSP may continue to access their existing CHSP social support group on an ongoing basis to allow the continuity of social relationships. This only applies to clients attending a pre-existing CHSP social support group service.”
Every Home Care Package requires an approved provider (such as The CareSide) to oversee the package. Your provider is legally required to host your package funds and ensure that your care planning and spending comply with your package, which includes developing, tracking and adjusting your budget. (Note: The government has strict rules regarding what Home Care Package funds can and can’t be used for. If you’re unsure, discuss with your Care Manager or consult the Home Care Packages manual via My Aged Care.)
With a fully managed plan, the provider takes care of all the necessary tasks on your behalf, such as budgeting, coordinating care, recruiting and training your staff, scheduling services, and modifying your plan should your care needs change. Under a self-managed plan, all those tasks become your responsibility: you’ll have to ensure your carers have the necessary compliance documents (insurance and police checks) while also devoting significantly more time and energy to administrative tasks that would otherwise be handled for you under a fully managed plan. That includes checking invoices against the budget you’ve created, as well as finding replacement staff when your carers go on leave or are unwell.
Remember, whether you self-manage your package or choose a fully managed plan, you’ll still maintain choice and control over your support workers, schedule, spending, and care.
Care
We always strive for a quick turnaround. Once you’re ready to get started, we typically begin services within 1-2 weeks.
If you are transferring care from another provider to The CareSide, schedule the start date of your services with us to be the same date as your cessation day with your previous provider to avoid a gap in care. Remember: You aren’t allowed to have a period when your two care providers overlap. If your start date with The CareSide is later than your cessation day, there will be a period when you are not receiving care.
After you sign up with The CareSide, our team will:
- Conduct a home safety assessment
- Provide a comprehensive care assessment
- Develop your personalised care plan based on your care assessment
- Finalise your home care budget
We’ll also assign a Care Manager to you and provide you with their contact details (direct phone number and email address). Following your first visit, our team will call you to ensure your satisfaction and confirm all of your needs have been met.
No, not if you plan to pay out-of-pocket. The CareSide offers private-pay services and those do not require assessments from the ACAT team.
ACAT stands for Aged Care Assessment Team. They operate out of local hospitals and assess elderly Australians to determine their Home Care Package level.
We always strive to pair you with the ideal caregiver for your needs. If for some reason that person isn’t on our current staff, which is not typical but can happen, our recruitment team can source and hire them. Our home care specialists meet with our scheduling, recruitment, and care management teams every week to discuss your specific needs to ensure we have the right caregivers for you.
Under a fully managed plan, we will provide staff for you. If you opt for self-managed, however, you’ll be responsible for finding and recruiting your caregivers—which can be challenging in this tight labour market. That’s why most people choose a fully managed plan.
That’s what we strive for because continuity of care is important. We also encourage you to have a couple of support workers on your roster in case your regular caregiver is unwell or goes on annual leave. That way, you’re comfortable with several caregivers who can attend in your regular caregiver’s place. We encourage clients who have high care requirements (Levels 3 and 4) to be introduced to at least three carers to ensure continuity of care.
We schedule caregivers from your care team precisely when you want them because we know your time is valuable. In the rare circumstances that a caregiver is running behind schedule due to an unanticipated reason (such as a traffic jam), our team will reach out to let you know.
Yes, each care visit is a minimum of two hours. This is to be fair to our caregivers, as their home care industry awards require them to have minimum shift lengths of two hours. In certain circumstances, if your care needs require shorter shifts, that can be arranged.
Our goal is to create meaningful relationships with our clients. It is difficult to accomplish that if home visits are brief and strictly task-focused. We want to provide 360-degree care, and during that two-hour window, our caregivers can assist with anything you need—be it personal care, house cleaning, transport, meal preparation, laundry, and more. Care isn’t limited to any one type of service, and it can serve different purposes and goals from one visit to the next.
We also strive to care for the people who care for you. This means we must act in the best interests of our caregivers as well. The government has recognised that significant changes are necessary in order to attract and retain people in this important field of work. In addition to a pay rise for carers, the government also implemented a two-hour minimum service to be written into the carers’ award.
The CareSide recognised this as a pivotal factor in staffing top support workers even before the award changes, so we have always enforced a two-hour service minimum. Our caregivers do their best work during longer visits as opposed to shorter ones. The CareSide recruits and retains the top caregivers in the industry, and our ability to offer longer care windows helps us continually meet that goal.
No, your standard service charges already include any necessary travel costs. If your caregiver takes you out for errands or otherwise, then your Home Care Package will be charged—but these costs will already be included in your agreed-upon budget, so there won’t be any surprise travel expenses.
During your free care assessment and consultation with The CareSide, your Care Manager will develop an individualised care plan with you and provide a budget for required services. This conversation will cover:
- Your individual care needs
- Your lifestyle goals
- A home safety risk assessment
- Advice on how to best live independently
- A personal Health Care Plan that our caregivers will follow each visit
Finding and recruiting caregivers and scheduling services can be challenging, particularly when there is a tight labour market. Additionally, if your chosen caregiver gets sick or is unavailable for any reason, you won’t have access to immediate backup care to take their place.
We are unable to recommend specific healthcare workers for clients who self-manage their Home Care Package. We have a very selective vetting process for any of the individuals we hire, and therefore we cannot guarantee the same high standards for people we have not screened and trained. If you opt for a self-managed plan, here are a few ways to find staff:
- Speak with people in your network who can recommend you a caregiver
- Visit local retirement villages to ask residents for caregiver recommendations, especially ones who have experience with self-managed care
- Research online forums and social media groups for nurses or carers who live in your state
- Contact local temporary staffing agencies to see if they have any support workers available
We have several hundred talented and compassionate support workers, many of whom speak multiple languages. We always strive to pair you with the ideal caregiver for your needs. However, we can’t guarantee the support worker we pair you with will speak a specific language because there are many factors at play such as your location, the type of care you need, the hours in which you need someone at your home, and the staff we have who live nearby.
Your Care Manager meets with our scheduling, recruitment, and care management teams weekly to discuss client needs and ensure we have the right caregivers for every person we care for. If we don’t have someone who’s perfect for you, we have a designated recruitment team that focuses on recruiting wonderful caregivers to suit your specific requirements.
Timing & Scheduling
Once you’re ready to begin, we typically set up services within 1-2 weeks. We strive for a quicker turnaround when possible.
This allows us sufficient time to have you set up for care on our end and implement you on a roster with your regular caregiver.
We provide a weekly schedule with specific visit times. The schedule is sent on Thursday evening for the following week. Occasionally, circumstances may require adjustments, but we’ll always inform you ahead of time.
Coverage
Yes, and you can use it with The CareSide because we are a nationwide provider.
Home Care Package funds are intended to keep our seniors safe and living comfortably in their homes. Ultimately, the government maintains a comprehensive manual that specifies what is and isn’t covered by Home Care Package budgets, so the final decision isn’t up to The CareSide. Broadly speaking, discretionary and general household expenses such as refrigerators and furniture are not covered by package funds. We often advise clients to ask themselves, ‘Will this expense keep you safe in your home longer?’ If the answer is ‘yes’, then usually it can be included in your budget and care plan.
Your Home Care Package covers 70% of prepackaged meals, with a 30% out-of-pocket contribution from yourself. In-home meal preparation by our caregivers is a popular solution and is a far better option because it enables you to have more freedom of choice over your meals and ensures you’ll have freshly prepared meals rather than frozen meals.
While we’re happy to cover these services, be mindful that they can deplete your budget quickly. It’s advisable to speak to your GP about an extended care plan—which will provide you with five free services from Allied Health providers—before considering additional services through your Home Care Package.
Equipment
You will collaborate with your personal Care Manager regarding equipment. There are strict guidelines home care providers must follow when procuring equipment through Home Care Packages. In some circumstances, this may include an assessment from an Occupational Therapist (OT) to ensure the purchased equipment is safe, fit for purpose, and the best solution to meet your goals.
Operations
We provide care services 24 hours a day, seven days per week (including public holidays). If you have an enquiry or concern after business hours, please call 1300 85 40 80 and you will speak to a person—they will take your message and you will be contacted as soon as possible by our scheduling department, your Care Manager, or one of our Home Care Consultants. If you have a medical emergency, please contact 000 immediately.
Yes, aside from having a direct line to your Care Manager, during business hours your calls are answered directly by our team. After hours, a call answering service takes messages and passes them on to us. We monitor this regularly and respond the following business day for non-urgent matters. For emergencies, please call 000 straight away.
The CareSide is a national provider with a presence throughout the country, meaning we have resources that other providers can’t offer. We invest in our training, recruitment, and care management teams, enabling us to maintain a full staff of highly qualified Care Managers and caregivers at all times.
But it’s not just about benefits of scale: The CareSide is a family-run business, and at our core, we know that personalised attention is one of the most important aspects of quality home care. That’s why all of our clients have designated Care Managers with direct contact, frequent check-ins to ensure they have everything they need, and opportunities to complete satisfaction surveys so we can continually improve our services and exceed their expectations.
We like to think we offer the best of both worlds: the individual attention that you would expect from a local, family-run business along with the stability and resources of a nationwide organisation.
Our founders, Emily and Gareth, have firsthand experience trying to find home care for their loved ones. They know how overwhelming the process can be. Outside of our rates, here are some additional factors that set The CareSide apart:
- We schedule home visits precisely when you want them because we know your time is valuable.
- Our caregivers are more than just helpers who can pass police checks—they’re skilled professionals with years of experience in aged care. They’re trained in a wide variety of specialisations and can capably support seniors with different levels of need.
- Our Care Managers are the best of the best: we only hire the top 5% of Care Managers who apply for our positions, and they are all registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA).
- We believe in open lines of communication. We provide our clients with direct access to their Care Manager via their mobile phone as well as our online portal. You’ll never need to go through any intermediaries to get in touch with your team.
- We’re a family-run business. Unlike many other home care providers, we are not affiliated with a religious organisation, nor are we owned by a private equity firm or third-party organisation—and we don’t rely on government tender contracts. Our focus is building a sustainable business over the long term that supports our clients and employees. We believe that aligning incentives leads to the best outcomes, and we’re able to do so because we don’t have any conflicts of interest.