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Plan Ahead For The Aged Care You Want

Early planning can take away a lot of the stress and uncertainty that can arise when considering aged care at home or a residential aged care facility.

Know What Your Options Are

  • The first option that probably comes to mind is a residential aged care facility. These facilities provide accommodation and care depending on your personal needs. Care can range from personal care, such as help with showering and dressing, together with occasional nursing care to continuous nursing care for those with a greater degree of frailty
  • What you may not realise, however, is that there are also Home Care Packages that provide access to services that can help you to stay at home for as long as possible. Support services may include cleaning, meal preparation and transport for shopping or appointments.

Start Planning Early

There are a number of reasons why you should plan ahead and well before the need for aged care is imminent. For example:

  • In many cases, the need to move into residential care can be sudden due to a serious illness or injury (eg a stroke, heart attack, or fall), or another unexpected event.
  • It’s not uncommon to find there are significant waitlists for residential care, particularly at the more popular facilities.

Visit Local Facilities

Whether you currently need residential aged care or not, ideally you should plan to visit a range of facilities in your chosen area as soon as possible. Becoming familiar with the alternatives can enable you and your family to have meaningful conversations regarding your options and make more informed lifestyle and financial decisions.

Have Your Eligibility Assessed

Before you can enter an aged care facility and receive Government support, your health situation must be assessed by the Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT). The assessors are generally health professionals such as doctors, nurses and social workers who specialise in aged care.

This is a free service that can be done at home or in a health centre or hospital. The purpose is to determine whether you are eligible to move into residential care, or can access a range of care services that would enable you to stay in your home longer.

More information about ACAT assessments can be found on the Australian Government’s My Aged Care website.

Assess Affordability

While the Australian Federal Government provides some funding for residential aged care facilities, those who can afford it are expected to contribute to the cost of their care. The four different fees you may be asked to pay include:

  • an accommodation payment – for your accommodation in the aged care facility, which may be paid as either a lump sum, regular instalments or a combination of lump sum and instalments
  • a basic daily fee - which will usually be payable by all residents and is a contribution towards daily living costs, such as nursing, personal care and meals
  • a means-tested care fee - which is an additional contribution towards the cost of care that you may need to pay depending on the assessment of your income and assets, and
  • an extra services fee - which may be payable if you choose a higher standard of accommodation or additional services and it varies from place to place.

It is therefore important to determine whether care in your preferred facility is affordable. You need to ensure you will have sufficient assets to pay the accommodation payment required to secure yourself a spot in your facility of choice when the time comes, as well as cover the ongoing aged care fees and your living expenses.

Understand the Financial Side

There are a range of strategies that can be used to reduce aged care fees, however, caution needs to be exercised to ensure you have enough money to afford the care you want.

Regardless of whether home or residential aged care is required, if you wait until the last minute to consider your options, you may miss the opportunity to restructure your assets in order to minimise the fees you may have to pay and/or maximise the social security benefits you may receive.

To find out more about the information in this article please contact us.

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