Aged care at home in Craigieburn
In-home care across Craigieburn 3064, Mickleham, Kalkallo and Donnybrook, for households where the oldest generation moved in rather than out.
When the ageing parent moved in, not out
Craigieburn is a young suburb with an old-fashioned problem. The estates that spread north from the township were built for couples in their thirties with a mortgage and a pram, and a lot of those couples have since brought a parent out from overseas or down from an older suburb to live with them. So the eighty-year-old in the front bedroom did not retire here. She arrived here, often without a driver's licence, without a local doctor she has known for thirty years, and without the neighbours she used to lean over the fence to.
The practical consequence is that the person organising her care is a working son or daughter who is already stretched. Most of our Craigieburn arrangements are built around that: visits timed to the gap between the school run and the office, and a plan the family can actually keep to.
Two-storey houses and a walking frame
Newer housing is not automatically easier housing. A great deal of 3064 is double storey with the bedrooms and the main bathroom upstairs, a hob shower with a lip to step over, and a garage that opens into a laundry with a step. Someone unsteady on their feet in a house like that has more risk in front of them than the owner of a flat old weatherboard.
The usual sequence is an occupational therapy assessment through allied health, then home modifications. Often the answer is not equipment at all, it is moving the bedroom downstairs and putting a rail in the ground-floor toilet.
The nearest hospital is a drive away
Craigieburn has Craigieburn Central, a train line that terminates here, and no hospital. Specialist and outpatient appointments mean the Northern Hospital at Epping or Broadmeadows, and both are a genuine drive with the Hume Freeway in between. If the licence has gone, or the family car is at work all day, appointments quietly start getting missed.
Transport handles that: driven there, waited with, driven home. Where the appointment calendar has become a job in itself, care management takes the whole thing off the family, including the chasing of referrals nobody sent.
Who actually lives in 3064
Craigieburn has grown faster over the past two decades than almost anywhere else in the country, and the growth has been driven heavily by families arriving from overseas. Indian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Turkish and Pakistani households are all substantial here. For the older generation in those families, English is often something they never needed, because they arrived after retirement age to join children who already had it.
So language matching is not a courtesy in Craigieburn, it is what makes a visit function. Tell us the language and the dialect on the first call. We match where the roster allows and we say so plainly when it does not, which is more useful to you than a promise made to win the enquiry.
Respite is the one people ask for last
Personal care and domestic assistance are what people ring about. Respite is what they need and do not ask for, usually because the daughter doing the caring has never once described herself as a carer. If memory is part of the picture, dementia care is worth raising early rather than at the point where the household is exhausted.
Getting here, and how it starts
Craigieburn is a straight run up the Hume from our Essendon Fields office, which is why the northern corridor is where our coverage is deepest. 3064 is a large postcode, taking in Mickleham, Kalkallo, Donnybrook and Roxburgh Park alongside Craigieburn itself, and we work across all of it.
Support at Home replaced Home Care Packages on 1 November 2025. If you have an approved package you can bring it to us. If nobody has been assessed, ring and we will tell you what order things happen in, which is not obvious the first time. Plenty of families here start privately with a few hours a week while an assessment is pending, then switch across.
Nearby suburbs
Common questions
My parents live with us in Craigieburn. Can they still get Support at Home?
Yes. Support at Home follows the person, not the household. It does not matter that the house is in your name or that there are three generations under the roof. Your mother is assessed on what she needs, and the carer comes to the address she lives at.
Do you cover Mickleham, Kalkallo and Donnybrook?
Yes. Postcode 3064 stretches a long way north of Craigieburn township and takes in Mickleham, Kalkallo, Donnybrook and Roxburgh Park. Greenvale is 3059 and Somerton is 3062, and both are inside our normal run as well.
Can a carer take Mum to appointments at the Northern Hospital in Epping?
Yes, and it is one of the most common trips we make from this end of the corridor. Craigieburn has no hospital of its own, so specialist appointments generally mean Epping or Broadmeadows. The carer drives, waits, and takes her home afterwards.
The house is double storey and Dad's bedroom is upstairs. What can be done?
Most of the newer Craigieburn estates are two storey with the main bathroom upstairs and a hob shower, which is exactly the wrong layout for someone unsteady on their feet. An occupational therapist will usually look first at whether a downstairs room can become the bedroom, then at rails, a shower seat and removing the hob.
We need a break. Can you do respite in Craigieburn?
Yes. In-home respite means a carer sits with your parent in your house while you go out, sleep, or travel. Ring with the dates in mind, because respite is the one thing worth booking ahead rather than arranging in a hurry.
Enquire about care in Craigieburn
Tell us where you're up to and we'll be in touch. Prefer to talk? Call 1800 434 002.