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Introduction
Welcome to Aged Care Australia, your best source of comprehensive impartial information about aged care. If you’re an older Australian or looking after an older family member or friend, you’ll find information in these pages that can help you work out what services are available to help you and how you can get started. Aged care is a shared responsibility that involves family, friends, volunteers – and the Australian Government.
Australia has one of the most advanced aged care systems in the world, and our aim here is to help you find out what your options are and discover exactly how we can help. Please click on any of the categories below to go directly to a subject category, or scroll down the page for more information.
- Need help right now?
- Aged care in Australia
- MyHospitals
- Register for an eHealth record
- Being assessed
- Lifestyle choices
- Thinking ahead
- What are my options?
- Help for people with particular needs
- Useful contacts
- For carers and family
- Common questions
Need help right now?
Often people look for support because something has happened – for example a family member has just had a stroke or a fall and they urgently need help in making decisions and caring for them. This part of our website can help you with advice on how to proceed as well as providing you with other useful resources and contacts.Read more: Need help right now?
Aged care in Australia
Aged care in Australia includes everything from quality aged care homes through to a wide range of schemes that give older people a chance to live in their own homes and maintain their independence. This part of our website will take you through the broad range of options that are available in this country.Read more: Aged care in Australia
MyHospitals website
Australians can now access nationally consistent, locally relevant information on public hospitals and around 150 private hospitals, via the MyHospitals website.Read more: MyHospitals
Register for an eHealth record
Registering for an Australian Government eHealth record means your important health information will be available online when you need it, day or night. It also means that the doctors, nurses and other health professionals involved in your care have the information they need to make the best possible decisions about your health. To register for an eHealth record, visit the eHealth website.Read more: My eHealth record
Being assessed
To access most government-funded community care services (more information) and aged care homes you first have to go through an assessment (more information) process. This is not as daunting as it seems, and to reassure you we’ve included an entire section on how these assessments work and what to expect.Read more: Being assessed
Lifestyle choices
In this section you’ll find information on taking care of yourself and maintaining your health and independence in later years, as well as a section on retirement villages.Read more: Lifestyle choices
Thinking ahead
Here you’ll find information on all the financial and legal considerations of ageing and aged care. You will also find information on how to plan to be healthy and how registering for an eHealth record can help you take control of your important health information.”Read more: Thinking ahead
What are my options?
Here you’ll find an entire section of our website devoted to your care options – everything from information on aged care services and community care programs (more information) that offer help at home, to information about aged care homes, short-term care and related health care services such as physiotherapy (more information), podiatry (more information) and day therapy (more information).Read more: What are my care options?
For carers and family
If you’re looking after an older family member or friend who is unable to provide care for themselves, you’re probably entitled to a lot more assistance than you realise. Why not get a little help so you can take a break? Or find out about the wide range of resources available to help you share some of the physical and emotional burden of caring?Read more: For carers and family
Help for people with particular needs
If you’re an older person who has a particular need we may be able to provide services, programs and information that can help. For example, you may have specific cultural, language or health requirements – or you could be a veteran, or suffering from financial hardship or live in a rural or remote area. Whatever your needs, this part of our website is for you.Read more: Help for people with particular needs
Useful contacts
Use this section if you wish to go straight to the organisations that can help. We’ve included a wide range of contacts in this section – everything from government agencies to associations, community care providers, support groups and resources for specific medical conditions.Read more: Useful contacts
Common questions
Our experts have compiled a list of questions that people are always asking them about Australia’s aged care services. So if you have a question, why not look here to see if we have the answer before chasing around elsewhere for the solutions?Read more: Common questions
Common questions on this topic:
- I think that I need more help to be able to stay at home than the Home and Community Care program seems to offer. Is there more help?
- I am not ready to go into care but I would like to find out more about what is involved in entering into aged care for future reference. Where would be the best place to obtain this sort of information?
See more common questions on this topic | See all common questions