Everyone who is approved for a government funded Home Care Package is given the option to self-manage it. This option gives you greater choice and control, more hours of support and better value overall.
Why self-manage your home care package?
Before the policy of Consumer Directed Care was fully introduced in 2017, having a home care package meant you had to stick with your aged care provider with sometimes limited choices. This meant accepting their staff and available support options, according to their rosters.
With consumer directed care, from February 2017 onwards, HCP funding was allocated to the person rather than to the aged care provider. This meant, for the first time, people could exercise ‘self-management’ of their package, i.e., choose their own service providers and health professionals, potentially save on administration fees and decide – through platforms like Mable – who would support them, when and at what rates.
By choosing to self-manage your Home Care Package, you can potentially get up to double the hours of support. By choosing Mable, you pay lower administration fees, which means more of your package is available for you to spend on support. Find out more about self-managing your home care package through Mable.
What is a self-managed home care package
Self-managing your Home Care Package means you have complete control and choice over how you use your home care package funding. This includes:
- Choosing the people who support you
- Choosing what services you want from the people who support you
- Choosing when (what time, how many hours, etc.) you want those services.
You might want someone who:
- lives nearby and knows your neighbourhood
- who speaks your language
- shares your interests
- can meet your scheduling requirements, or
- any other preferences you might have.
This choice is crucial, not only to determine the quality of support you receive, but also the value you can get out of your package. Greater value means more hours of support for you or your family member, something that can directly impact quality of life.
How to ‘self-manage’ your Home Care Package with Mable
Mable has been playing a leading role in supporting consumers rights to self manage their HCP for several years. People with a Home Care Package who register with Mable to find and select their team of supports, are using what we describe as a ‘self-managed Home Care Package’.
By signing up to Mable, you have access to a safeguarded online platform to search and connect with Independent Support Workers from your local area. Self-managing means you and your family do this part yourself. You find a worker you like, agree on an hourly rate, the services they provide and the days and times they provide support. All of this is done via our secure online platform.
You still need an Approved Home Care Provider to host your package, but by self-managing your package, we can introduce you to our Approved Provider Partners, such as Homemade, who offer a lower administrative fee, freeing up more funding for you to spend on your services.
Learn more about connecting with support when you are self-managing your home care package via Mable.
Benefits of self-managing your home care package with Mable
For some clients, choosing Mable is about the freedom of selecting your own support workers and deciding when they will come into your home to support you. For others, it’s about the peace of mind it provides about the safety and wellbeing of their loved ones. But for most clients, the overwhelming benefit is the additional support it provides through the unprecedented value that Mable and our partner providers can deliver.
In fact, self-managing your package via Mable can provide you with double the hours of care that you would receive compared to a more traditional provider. Here’s a breakdown of how that works, and how many hours you would receive depending on your level of package.
Find out how self-managing their home care package helped Mable clients Helen and Graham.
Start self-managing your Home Care Package with Mable
If you’ve just received a Home Care Package, here are the steps you can take to get started with Mable:
Step 1: Sign up for free to the platform, and start searching for independent support workers in your local area. If you know someone in your community who you would like to engage to provide you with support, you can bring them along too.
Step 2: Call our customer support team on 1300 73 65 73 to find out which partner providers are in your local area. We’ll also explain how their fees work.
Step 3: Contact support workers directly to get to know them better. Agree the hourly rate you wish to pay, and the hours and services that work for you both. Many workers on the platform will offer a meet-and-greet for free, so you can meet in person to find out if you’re a good fit.
Step 4: Our approved Home Care Provider partners will host your package and we’ll send invoices to them directly on your behalf after timesheets have been approved on Mable, so you don’t have to worry about it.
FAQs
In this Home Care Package guide
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