Aged care at home in Adelaide

Our newest region, and we will say so

Adelaide is the third city we work in, after Melbourne and Sydney, and it is the most recent. That is worth stating plainly rather than burying, because it has one practical consequence: coverage is not yet uniform across the metropolitan area. A roster gets built suburb by suburb, and in some suburbs it is deeper than others.

What that means for you is a phone call rather than a form. Give us a postcode and we will tell you what we can actually staff there this month. If the answer is not yet, you will get that answer instead of a wait that goes nowhere.

No office here, and why that matters less than it sounds

Our offices are in Melbourne and Sydney. Adelaide care is coordinated from Essendon Fields, and the carers are local people rostered to your area.

For the visit itself this changes nothing, because care happens in your kitchen and your bathroom rather than in a building we own. Where it does matter is lead time. Starting a service in a suburb where we already have carers can happen in days. Starting one in a suburb where we have none means recruiting first, and we would rather tell you that up front than let you find out by waiting.

Adelaide is getting older faster than most

South Australia has the oldest median age of the mainland states, and Adelaide's established suburbs carry a lot of that. The practical version: a great many people in the inner north, the western suburbs and the foothills are in houses they bought in the sixties and seventies, on blocks that were manageable then and are not now.

That shapes what people actually ring us about. It is rarely nursing first. It is the shower that has become frightening, the lawn that has got away, the driving that stopped after an eye test. Home modifications and an occupational therapy assessment do more to keep someone in that house than any amount of extra visiting.

After a hospital stay

Discharge is the single most common reason people call us, in any city. Adelaide's metropolitan hospitals, the Royal Adelaide, the Queen Elizabeth at Woodville, Flinders at Bedford Park, Lyell McEwin at Elizabeth Vale, Modbury and Noarlunga, all discharge people who were managing before the admission and are not managing after it.

Ring as soon as a discharge date is being talked about, not on the day. The first fortnight home is when readmission risk is highest, and it is also the fortnight that takes the most arranging: nursing for a wound or new medication, an allied health assessment, and someone there for the first shower.

Getting to appointments

Adelaide is a driving city, and giving up the licence lands harder here than somewhere with a denser network. Transport is a support worker who drives you, walks you in, and waits, which is a different thing from a taxi voucher when the appointment is a specialist forty minutes away.

What you can get

The full service list, unchanged by postcode: personal care, domestic assistance, in-home nursing, allied health, transport, respite care, meals and nutrition, home maintenance, home modifications, assistive technology, companionship, dementia care and care management.

Funded through Support at Home, through the Commonwealth Home Support Programme, or paid privately while you wait for a package. Rates are published in full at pricing.

Elsewhere

• Melbourne — our largest region, with suburb-level pages.
• Sydney — coordinated from the Fairfield office and community centre.
• All locations