Key Takeaways at a Glance
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Your Roadmap for Care: A care plan is a formal document that details exactly what support you need, who will provide it, and when. It ensures everyone is on the same page.
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Collaborative Process: It is not written for you; it is written with you. Your preferences, lifestyle, and personal goals are the foundation of the plan.
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Living Document: A care plan isn’t set in stone. It must be reviewed at least every 12 months or whenever your health or circumstances change.
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Government Requirement: For those with a Home Care Package, a care plan is mandatory to ensure transparency and that funds are being used to meet your assessed needs.
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Holistic Focus: A good care plan covers more than just medical needs; it includes social goals (like attending church) and domestic needs (like gardening) to support your whole life.
If you’ve been wondering What is a care plan in aged care? you’ve come to the right place.
Here at Care For Family, we specialise in providing aged care services that not only work to meet the needs of our clients but are developed in close consultation with them. When deciding upon services and before delivering those services to our clients, we work closely with you and your loved one to develop what’s called a care plan.
The care plan ensures that you or your family member requiring care is receiving everything they need to continue living happily at home for as long as possible. In this article, we discuss what a care plan is in aged care and what it entails, to help you decide upon the best course of action when it comes to planning your or your loved one’s care.
What is a care plan in aged care?
A care plan is an important document that outlines several crucial items. These include:
- Your loved one’s individual care needs
- The services they will receive to meet those needs
- Who will be responsible for providing those services and when
A care plan in aged care is not simply a rough outline of care that your service provider puts together for the individual requiring care – it is a detailed document, required by government regulation for a Home Care Package, to plan for their home care needs. In fact, in accordance with government regulations, a Home Care Package plan could be updated at least once every 12 months to account for any changes in needs, or at your (or the person receiving care’s) request should circumstances change. This makes the care plan a highly valuable tool at your disposal, to ensure you or your loved one is receiving the best possible care at all times.
What does a care plan in aged care include?
Your service provider will work with you and the person receiving care to include a number of important components in the care plan. These include:
- Goals, needs, and individual preferences for care
- The services that will be provided or organised for them
- Details about who will provide these services
- Details about the frequency, days, and times that services will be provided at
- Care management arrangements
- How involved you, your loved one and/or your legal representative will be in managing the package
- How often the service provider will do formal reassessments of the care plan
What types of care does a care plan relate to?
Care plans usually refer to care received under a Home Care Package (HCP). The HCP program provides support to older people with varying needs represented from low-level care (Level 1) to more complex high-level care needs (Level 4), to help them stay at home for as long as possible. Care For Family is able to manage your Home Care Package under this government-funded program, to plan, organise, and deliver Home Care Packages. However, there are other types of care plans applicable to certain types of care. For example, palliative care plans, advanced care planning, hospital discharge care plans, and disability care plans to name a few.
What is a Home Care Package?
A Home Care Package is available to Australians who wish to remain at home despite needing some assistance with day-to-day living. Many Australians today would prefer to remain at home rather than transition to an aged care facility, and the Australian Government has developed the HCP program in order to support you or your loved one in doing so.
At Care For Family, we provide professional and skilled care from 1 – 24 hours home care for older Australians who hope to maintain their independence and remain at home, all whilst receiving the individualised care they need. As an experienced manager of Home Care Packages, we are able to offer you or your senior family member the services they need, depending on their care needs, preferences, and lifestyle.
We work with you and the person receiving care (or their legal representative, where applicable) to develop an individual care plan, based on you or your loved one’s needs and desires for their care, and regularly reassess the care plan to ensure that it is always best meeting these needs and wishes.
How does Care For Family prepare the care plan?
For the HCP program, which was developed by the Australian Government under a consumer-directed care approach, the people requiring care are given a choice, flexibility, and control over the types of care they receive, when and how these services are delivered and whom they are delivered by. This approach aligns with Care For Family’s ethos of providing high-quality, compassionate, and individualised care.
In preparing you or your loved one’s care plan, we work closely with you and your family member receiving care to put together a detailed and specific plan for delivering that care. We listen to the individual needs for aged care services and also the lifestyle and personal desires for how care should be delivered. Whether the requirement is assistance with cleaning, shopping, transport to and from your community centre, church, or social engagements, or personal care such as showering and monitoring medications, the care plan will detail exactly how we will deliver these services, including when and how often.
We will discuss with you and/or your loved one the goals for care, which may include wanting to live a healthy and active life, maintain social connections, or be more independent, and where appropriate refer to the assessment provided by the Aged Care Assessment Team, to identify individual needs. Based on this assessment and our discussions with you, we can then decide upon the specific services that we will deliver, to help achieve these goals for care. The types of services we can provide in the care plan include:
- Help at home
- Personal care
- Help with meals
- Transport
- Fitness
- Changes to your home
- Social support
For more information about our services under the HCP program, visit our Home Care Packages (HCP) page.
We hope we’ve answered your question, ‘What is a care plan in aged care?’ with the information in this article. However, if you still have more questions, please feel free to request a callback, and one of our team will be in touch soon.
Frequently answered questions (FAQs)
1. Can I change my care plan if I don’t like it?
Absolutely. It is your plan. If your needs change or you want to swap a service (e.g., less cleaning, more transport), just talk to your Care Manager.
2. Who sees my care plan?
Your care plan is shared with your care providers so they know exactly what to do. You and your nominated family members also have a copy.
3. Does a care plan cost money?
The creation and management of the care plan are covered by the care management fees within your Home Care Package budget.
4. What if I have a sudden health change?
You should contact your provider immediately. They will conduct a reassessment and update your care plan to reflect your new needs (e.g., adding nursing care after a fall).
5. Do I need a care plan for private care?
While not government-mandated, reputable providers like Care For Family will still create a care plan for private clients to ensure high-quality, consistent service.
