To age in place, control over finances and self-managed care: what older Australians want

Older Australians want to stay at home as long as possible and continue to have greater control over their finances through self-managed care, according to a new Home Industry Study by Catalyst Research.

The online survey, conducted during March 2022 with over 4,000 responses from across Australia, found that:

• For 71% of respondents, staying at home for longer or avoiding residential care was their motivation for considering home care to allow them to manage ageing in familiar surroundings while maintaining positive relationships
• Retaining more control over their spending was cited as the biggest benefit of self-managed care by 78% of respondents
• 60% cited that the number one reason they would choose to change a provider was inconsistent staffing 
• Half of the respondents were concerned about cost and the fear that services would not be up to their standard 
• 43% were challenged in navigating home care, and four in ten see the wait time as a barrier
• Only 11% knew if they had unspent funds.

Self-management is key to ageing in place

According to the Department of Health’s website, home care providers currently hold more than $1.5 billion of aged care consumers’ Home Care Package funds.

However, as mentioned above, only 11% of respondents knew that they had unspent funds. 

If you’re an aged care client on Mable with a Level 4 home care package, you can get a significantly higher number of hours of support by self-managing your home care package. 

Mable CEO Peter Scutt says “The current home care package system can be confusing. It is costly and inefficient, and despite its claim of being a consumer-directed care approach, it can fail to acknowledge that even as we age, we can still have a choice and control over our own needs.”

“Rather than 10-12 hours of support per week, clients can access 18 to 20 hours of support per week by self-managing a home care package using Mable, directly resulting in an improved quality of life,” he adds.

Benefits of self-managing a home care package

By self-managing your home care package through Mable, you are empowered to have choice and control. 

• You choose the support services you want
• You choose your support workers
• You mutually decide how much to pay for your support services
• You get more hours of support as compared to a traditional provider
• You get to develop long-term support relationships through continuity of care.

Find out how other Mable clients are self-managing their home care packages. To learn more about how home care packages work, visit our home care package topic library.