Home Care Package

Home Care Package self-management: how it works

17 June 2022

Last updated 27 March 2023

Everyone who is approved for a government funded Home Care Package (HCP) 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 that 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 get more hours of support out of your package. 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 sign up on Mable to book their team of support workers, are using what we describe as a ‘self-managed home care package’.

Self-managing means you and your family can book independent support workers in your area yourself. You find a worker you like, agree on an hourly rate, the services they provide and the days and times they provide support.

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.

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

Yes, you can! We see Mable as a community-based solution for people to find care and support, especially in rural and regional areas, creating not only jobs, but also connected communities. Just let us know who they are and we will fast track them through our onboarding process which includes police checks, references and qualifications (if applicable). Once they’re approved, you can engage them through the platform and they’ll be covered by insurance.

You can’t generally engage a family member but you may be able to in certain cases, for example, in a remote community. You could discuss this with your case manager.

We like to work with providers who we think put the consumer at the centre of their business. They offer competitive admin fees and a tiered, flexible case management structure. Some clients may need full case management whereas others are looking for more choice in how they schedule services and who provides them.

Please call us on 1300 73 63 53 if you’d like to find out more about the partners we work with, and how you can get connected.

Definitely. Case managers are quickly able to recognise a consumer who will benefit from self-managing. A consumer who wants to have more choice and needs more hours is likely looking for something different.

As a case manager, you’ll have a login to the platform and you’ll be able to help your clients engage support. Please call us on 1300 73 63 53 to learn more about your options.

As a consumer, you search directly for workers and then negotiate the services, the schedule and an hourly rate. There is a 5% service fee for the consumer to pay and a 10% service fee for the worker to pay. This importantly covers our onboarding and approval process, insurance, and other support provided to our community. You can find out more about our fee structure and comparison to traditional providers here.

We are an online platform, so you do need to create a profile and select workers on your computer or mobile device. If you are not comfortable doing this on your own, you might decide to host your package with a provider who can provide you with a little extra case management – and they can help you to select and schedule your workers via Mable.

This term has been in aged care for some time. Case managers are also known as coordinators or client advisors. The case manager works with a family to develop an individualised care plan, based on what the personal needs while ageing. The case manager allows the family to put that plan into action and stays in contact as circumstances change. In a complex case, the case manager might be in touch regularly. For families who are comfortable self-managing, it might only be a couple of times a year.

Service providers still have a duty of care to the client, to make sure the client is acting reasonably in the choices they’re making. Different providers have different levels of risk tolerance when it comes to putting the consumer at the centre and allowing them to make their own choices. And they are still responsible for developing an individualised care plan, whether or not you are self-managing.

We are a platform that enables you to connect with independent support workers and case managers who can develop a care plan with you. Some of those might be available through home care providers but increasingly we’re seeing independent case managers, people with a case management background willing to be independent advisors to consumers around their aged care needs and how to get the best out of their funding.

Learn more about the benefits of self-managing your Home Care Package.