Frequently Asked Questions
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Costs, Fees & Funding
Costs vary based on the services you need. 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.
If you were paying an Income-Tested Fee (ITF) under the Home Care Package program, or if you were approved for care after September 12th 2024, you will be required to contribute to your services under the new Support at Home program. The amount you need to contribute will depend on your financial situation and an income means assessment conducted by Services Australia. To get an idea of what your co-contribution might be, you can also use the Fee Estimator tool on My Aged Care
If you were previously granted a Home Care Package (HCP) and paying an Income-Tested Fee (ITF), you will continue to use the results of your original income assessment to calculate your co-contribution. If you’re a new Support at Home participant, Services Australia will conduct an income means assessment to determine your co-contributions. Once SA concludes the assessment, they will mail letters to you and your provider outlining your contributions. To get an idea of what your co-contribution might be, you can use the Fee Estimator tool on My Aged Care.
You’re generally considered a “grandfathered” care recipient if you were receiving a Home Care Package or approved for one before the Support at Home announcement on 12 September, 2024. “Grandfathering” care recipients into the Support at Home program simply means preserving what they had before the programs switched.
The primary difference between a “grandfathered” care recipient and a “transitioned” recipient is the date of the original home care assessment. If you completed your assessment before 12 September 2024, then you’re considered “grandfathered” into the Support at Home program. As such, you also fall under the ‘no worse off policy,’ which protects people who were already in the aged care system from paying more as a result of the change from Home Care Packages to Support at Home.
If you completed your assessment after 12 September 2024, but before 1 November 2025 (the day Support at Home began), you are considered a “transitioned” care recipient. That means you are expected to co-contribute to your care package, but your contributions are capped at a lower amount than those of Support at Home participants assessed after 1 November 2025.
Any surplus funds you accrued before the start of Support at Home on 1 November, 2025 will carry over. You can use those funds for additional services or to cover the cost of any Assistive Technology and Home Modifications (AT-HM).
Budgets have been changed to quarterly to reflect care recipients’ changing needs. This approach keeps funding flexible, enabling care recipients to increase services for short periods when needed and reduce services at other times within the same quarter to remain within their budget.
The biggest reason is that CHSP is ending in 2027, and as the program is gradually phased out, finding (and retaining) CHSP providers is becoming more difficult. If consistent, long-term support is important to you, and if you think you might need additional services in the future to maintain your independence, Support at Home is likely the more future-proof option.
Keep in mind that Support at Home also enables you to receive different services under every service category (Clinical, Independence, and Everyday Living), while CHSP limits access to one or two services per provider. If you are a CHSP participant with multiple home care needs, you might need to coordinate multiple providers, which can be a care management headache for you or your loved ones. These constraints can become cumbersome as your needs evolve, and the flexibility of Support at Home makes it easier to access different services as your situation changes.
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.
Not if you plan to pay out-of-pocket. The CareSide offers private-pay services and those do not require assessments.
However, before you can access government-subsidised aged care services, you need to be assessed. Learn more on My Aged Care.
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.
Yes, we can hire your care workers if that’s your preference. We pay above-award rates, so they may earn more working with The CareSide. They can also continue working with other providers and supporting other home care recipients who are not signed up with The CareSide.
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 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.
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 care. 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 funds are intended to keep our seniors safe and living comfortably in their homes. The Australian government maintains a comprehensive list that specifies what is and isn’t covered by funding, and these rules apply to all providers — including The CareSide. Visit My Aged Care to learn more about what is in scope and out of scope.
If your assessment determines that you’re eligible for meal preparation or meal delivery, your government funding may cover a certain percentage of the cost. However, it this does not include general grocery expenses (such as the cost of ingredients), takeaway food delivery, meals provided to other people in your household. Visit My Aged Care to learn more about how meals are funded under the Support at Home program.
If your assessment determines that you’re eligible for those services, your government funding may cover them. The Support at Home program includes a definitive service list that outlines all the available service types and the corresponding participant contribution categories.
Equipment
You will collaborate with your personal Care Manager regarding equipment. There are strict guidelines home care providers must follow when procuring equipment through government funding. In some circumstances, this may include additional assessments or a prescription from qualified health professionals.
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.