What is a My Aged Care Representative?
How to get help arranging home care through My Aged Care
Did you know you don’t have to deal with My Aged Care yourself? An older person seeking home care can appoint a My Aged Care Representative to coordinate services on their behalf. If you’re caring for an older person, you can get help with this responsibility too as you can even appoint a professional such as Empower Aged Care Consulting to be a representative with My Aged Care. An experienced healthcare professional can help you understand what home care you’re eligible for, provide independent advice for informed decisions and make all the arrangements with My Aged Care.
Arranging home care takes a lot of work, but you’re not alone
When caring for an older person, we take on a lot of their personal administration and arrangements as a matter of course. But getting government-funded home care underway is quite a big undertaking. My Aged Care is a portal to a wide range of aged care services including home care services and Home Care Packages and it can be hard to navigate. And that’s just the start of the process.
Empower Aged Care’s director, Nicole Dunn, took this on for her nanna:
I did too.
We know from personal experience and from helping our clients, the process to arrange home care involves a lot of steps and effort to make sure you’re meeting all the criteria. It can be stressful worrying about whether an older loved one is able to get the care they need.
- it takes so much time and energy, and carers are managing this among their own life responsibilities, while attending to their older loved one’s ongoing needs too
- if family members aren’t knowledgeable about the aged care system and a senior’s health and wellbeing needs, they risk missing out on vital services covered by government funding.
What can My Aged Care Representatives do?
- Registering the older person with My Aged Care to start the process of applying for home care services.
- Making referrals (applying) for an ACAS or RAS assessment through My Aged Care.
- Finding providers to deliver services and starting Home Care Packages.
- Organising bookings and correspondence with assessors and service providers.
- Being the first point of contact for whenever My Aged Care, assessors, service providers or other healthcare professionals need to contact the older person.
- Receiving any My Aged Care letters or other communications.
- Making decisions on the older person’s behalf about assessments or referrals.
- Keeping information up to date on their My Aged Care portal.
Why is it important to engage a professional as your My Aged Care Representative?
With a healthcare professional’s experience you don’t just get your time back, you gain valuable advice and guidance. As one of our clients put it “you know their language and what to say”.
- We ensure you receive the government funded help you are entitled to.
- Faster assessments and services starting quicker.
- Less interactions and confusion for an older person.
- Reduced stress and worry for the older person and their family.
