Stumped by the complexities of the aged care system, Helen and her siblings nearly gave up on finding support for their Mum—until a fortuitous phone call completely altered their journey. Here’s their story.
Safe.
That word pops up frequently when Helen describes her experience with The CareSide.
Helen’s Mum, Betty, lives in the Snowy Mountains region of New South Wales—quite far from where Helen resides in Queensland. But at 91, Betty isn’t about to move: the youngest of 12 children, she’s called the Snowy Mountains home her entire life.
‘She’s incredible,’ Helen says fondly of her Mum. ‘They don’t make them like her anymore.’
Betty is mostly independent. She still cooks and cleans her house, which sits on more than 200 acres and has postcard-worthy views of the snow-capped peaks of Mount Kosciuszko. Keeping up with the property’s exterior, though, has become a challenge.
Helen’s parents managed their one-acre garden independently until her Dad’s health began to decline a few years ago. After undergoing procedures on his hip, back, and knees, he wasn’t able to keep up with work around the house anymore. He fell ill in June 2024, and sadly, passed away—though thankfully on his terms.
During that difficult period, Helen and her siblings explored home care options for their parents because they saw the toll it took, especially on Betty. But Australia’s complicated care system created a seemingly insurmountable barrier to accessing reliable aged care.
‘Even though you can jump online and do it, unless you’ve worked the system before, it is very complex,’ Helen recalls. ‘And I’ve worked in government! So I know the systems, processes, and policies that drive it.’
But to Helen, home care isn’t about policies and processes.
‘It’s about heartbeats,’ she says. ‘My parents are so incredibly important to me, I wouldn’t have the life that I have without their support.’
After her Dad’s passing, Helen kicked her search for reliable aged care into high gear. She estimates that she spent at least 30 hours trying to parse complicated government policies and distil all the information into something her Mum could understand. At one point, Helen’s brother told her to stop the search because securing care for their Mum seemed impossible.
But Helen persisted.
‘I was bamboozled,’ she says. ‘It’s so difficult getting someone to just listen to you. I’ve clicked on that link, I’ve read that document, and I’m still not sure how it works—can’t you help me?’
At first, Helen limited her desperate search for home care to local providers in her Mum’s region. She even reached out to several of those organisations, only to find out they had no space for Betty on their rosters. So Helen expanded her scope.
‘I thought we had to choose a local provider,’ Helen says, explaining how she believed that was how home care worked. ‘When I found The CareSide on a list of providers, I called and said: “I am on the eastern seaboard and my Mum is in a very remote area.”’
‘And the woman at The CareSide told me, “Helen, it doesn’t matter.”’
That initial conversation was the first in a series of lightbulb moments for Helen, who was in disbelief over how clearly and patiently The CareSide’s team explained everything. Suddenly, she had all the answers she couldn’t get anywhere else.
‘A five-minute conversation,’ Helen happily recalls now. ‘It was an enormous relief that I’d finally found somebody to explain this complex system to me and make me understand it—it was very cathartic!’
When Helen first contacted The CareSide, there were numerous aspects of the home care process that stumped her:
- Self-managing care in a remote region
- Navigating My Aged Care, including locating and using referral codes
- Managing finances and tracking her Mum’s funding
But once Helen understood how all those different pieces fit together, securing reliable aged care services for her Mum happened quickly. ‘I can’t speak highly enough of how—I use that word, safe—how safe I felt once I spoke to someone who could just very simply explain how this goliath of a system worked within five minutes,’ she says.
‘I replay that quite often, and I wonder if I hadn’t spoken to The CareSide that day, just where would my Mum be right now?’
Today, Helen and her Mum self-manage Betty’s Level 2 Home Care Package with help from their Care Manager, Veronica. Betty visits a podiatrist and receives gardening services, and though Helen now fully understands the home care process, she is still surprised by how easy it has been to secure the necessary support for her Mum.
‘All I did was send an email [to Veronica] and poof, magic—it just happened,’ she explains.
When Helen shares stories about Veronica, she lights up.
‘Oh my! She is lovely,’ Helen says with a smile. ‘She always asks straight away, “How’s Betty going? Does she need anything else?”’
‘I always get off the phone feeling so nice, because it’s very uncommon to have that consistent touchpoint—and they call you, you don’t have to call them.’
These days, Helen finds her home care conversations far more enjoyable than the early ones she struggled through while trying to navigate the system and get support for her Mum. Even now, she has trouble comprehending just how easy it all became once someone took the time to explain things to her—especially self-managing services and how to use those pesky My Aged Care reference numbers.
‘It’s a bit like that line from the movie Jerry Maguire, “You had me at hello,”’ she explains with a wry grin.
‘The CareSide had me at, “Helen, do you have a reference number?”’
