Provision of Respite in the Commonwealth Home Support Program - Discussion paper

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The National Aged Care Alliance is a representative body of peak national organisations involved in the aged care sector.
They have produced a paper (September 2013) outlining the proposed integrated, flexible and responsive respite and carer support system within the Commonwealth Home Support Program (CHSP)

Below is an extract from the paper and the link to read it in its entirety.

“As part of this long term vision, the Alliance considers the specific needs of carers to access a range of different support services based on their specific needs at any given time crucial. This will require:
•    A holistic assessment process; and
•    The ability for carers who care for multiple people to combine and schedule respite services in order to fully meet their needs.
Individualised funding (based on assessed need) should be considered as part of this vision in order to:
•    Meet the needs of consumers and carers by promoting both person and family centred care;
•    Allow carers to build their own specific package of services and support;
•    Assist carers of multiple people (particularly when one person is under 65 and one over 65) to use funds from both the aged care sector and the disability sector (which already utilises an individual funding model) and ‘line up’ their respite services in order to meet their needs;
•    Assist older carers receiving aged care and their adult children receiving disability funds to 'pool’ their resources in order to more effectively meet their shared needs. For example, this could mean that a carer could choose the same service provider for themselves as their son/daughter currently uses;
•    Provide greater equity in service provision; and
•    Complement the long-term vision of CDC models of service delivery for all home care."

Click here to view the discussion paper