It was a busy day at work when the hospital called. Your mother had fallen in the bathroom. A neighbour heard her calling and dialled 000. She was stable but shaken, and the doctor said she could not go back to an empty house alone. You had 48 hours to figure out what happens next. No home care in place. No aged care provider. No plan. Just a phone, a parent who needed help, and a clock that would not stop.

This happens to families across Melbourne every day.

What to do right now

Call a home care provider with workforce capacity: A provider with genuine aged care workforce depth can assess your parent’s needs over the phone and have an aged care professional at their home within days.

Start with private home care: No assessment, no queue, no government approval required. Personal care, nursing care at home, domestic assistance, and medication management can begin immediately.

Contact My Aged Care in parallel: Call 1800 200 422 and explain the urgency. Emergency assessments can be fast tracked for older Australians in crisis. This sets up government funded home care for the longer term.

Talk to the hospital before discharge: Ask the social worker to coordinate with a home care provider so aged care support is ready when your parent arrives home.

What emergency home care looks like

The same personal care, nursing care at home, domestic assistance, and aged care at home services any home care client receives. The difference is speed. Your aged care provider assesses needs quickly, matches a care worker, briefs them, and has them at the door within days.

A home care provider with more than 1,000 aged care professionals carries capacity for exactly these moments. Falls, hospital admissions, carer burnout, and sudden health changes do not wait for paperwork.

After the emergency

Once the crisis is covered, plan for longer term home care. Apply through My Aged Care for a Support at Home assessment if your parent does not have government funded aged care. If they do, contact their aged care provider to adjust the care plan and increase home care visits.

Private home care transitions to government funded aged care once approved. Your parent keeps the same care worker and the same continuity of care throughout.

Why Chris Barnard Health responds faster

Chris Barnard Health was built on a nursing agency foundation in 2010. Rapid aged care workforce deployment is how we started. As an approved aged care provider and registered NDIS provider delivering home care services and Support at Home across Melbourne, regional Victoria, and Tasmania, our aged care specific workforce of more than 1,000 aged care professionals can mobilise when families need it most.

If your parent needs home care now, call 1300 602 469. It is what Melbourne’s leading and largest aged care specific workforce was built for. So when your parent needs care, it does not arrive eventually. It arrives now.