How to raise a concern about home care

Almost every problem with home care starts small. A carer arrives at a different time each week, a task keeps getting skipped, someone new turns up unannounced. Left alone for three months it becomes the reason a family changes provider, and the provider is genuinely surprised, because nobody told them.

Raising it early is not being difficult. It is the cheapest fix available to everyone.

Write it down before you say it

Five minutes with a pen makes the conversation land, because it turns a feeling into a fact. For each thing that has gone wrong, note:

• What happened, in one plain sentence.
• When, with dates and times if you have them.
• How often, because “three of the last four Tuesdays” is a different conversation from “sometimes”.
• What you want instead. This is the one people skip, and it is the one that gets you an outcome.

That last point matters more than the tone of anything else you say. “The shower is being rushed” invites a discussion. “I want the shower visit to be forty minutes, and I want to know the day before if it will not be” gives someone something to agree to.

Keep the notes. If this ever goes past the provider, dates are what carry it.

Start with the person who can fix it

Ask who is accountable for your care and take it to them. In most providers that is a coordinator or a manager, not the support worker in your home.

Be careful about raising it with the carer alone. It feels kinder and it usually does not work, because rostering, visit length and who gets sent are not decisions a support worker makes. It also puts them in an awkward position, and if the person you like ends up carrying the complaint about the person you do not, you have made your own life harder.

Ask for three things at the end of the conversation:

1. What is going to change.
2. By when.
3. Who will confirm it has happened.

Then ask for it in writing. An email summarising the call is enough, and it is a normal request.

If the problem is a mismatch with one particular worker rather than a failure by the provider, say that plainly, because it has a much simpler fix. Our piece on what carer consistency actually means covers the difference.

Get an advocate if you want backup

Free, independent aged care advocates exist for exactly this. They will help you work out what to ask for, sit beside you in a meeting, or speak for you if you would rather not. It costs nothing and it is not a complaint about anyone.

People often assume an advocate is the nuclear option. They are the opposite. Bringing one in early usually keeps a matter small. Our page on free aged care advocacy explains what they do and how to reach one.

This is especially worth doing if the person receiving care would struggle to hold their own in the conversation, or if the family is not agreed on what the problem is. On that second one, when siblings disagree about care may be the more useful read first.

When to go to the Commission

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission handles complaints about aged care services, including home care. You can contact them at any time. You do not need the provider’s agreement and you do not need to have exhausted anything first.

Go to them when:

• The provider has been told and nothing has changed.
• The provider disputes that there is a problem at all.
• The issue involves anyone’s safety, money, dignity or rights.
• You do not feel able to raise it directly.

Anything involving actual or suspected abuse, neglect, theft or serious harm should go straight there. That is not a step in a process, it is the first call.

The Commission can also give you information without opening a complaint, so a phone call to ask what your options are is a legitimate use of them. Their details, and the other national numbers, are on our aged care contacts and hotlines page.

And if it cannot be repaired

Sometimes the answer is that this provider is not going to give you what you need. That is allowed, and it is not a failure on your part for trying first. How to switch aged care providers walks through doing it without a gap in services.

Before you go, one question is worth asking yourself: is this a problem with this provider, or with what you asked for? Some of the most common complaints, particularly about timing and rushed visits, come from a service agreement that was never quite right. Questions to ask an in-home care provider is written to catch those before they start.

What we do with concerns

A complaint that reaches us usually means we have missed something earlier. Your Care Lead is one named person who is accountable for your care and is the person to bring it to. What you raise goes into your One Story, so the fix travels with you rather than living in one person’s memory, and it is visible to everyone in your Care Circle rather than being explained again to each new face.

We would rather hear it in week two than lose you in month six. More on how that is meant to work is on the Aldera way.