Responsibilities of Home Care Package providers

Aged care service provider responsibilities

You must understand and carry out your responsibilities as an approved provider. These are set out in law.

They include things like:

• meeting quality standards
• using funds properly
• being transparent about the fees you charge.

Services you can provide

Providers use a person’s package funding to provide certain home care services. You can charge for some additional services, if the person agrees to them.

Responsibilities to care recipients

When providing home care services to a person, you must:

• act in a way that meets their legal and consumer rights
• use the Translating and Interpreting Service if needed
• avoid damaging their property
• manage home care packages in a certain way
• only stop providing services in certain circumstances.

Provide home care documents

For each person receiving home care, you must prepare:

• a home care agreement
• a care plan
• an individualised budget
• monthly statements.

The documents must be clear and easy to understand.

Use a consumer-directed care approach

Using a consumer-directed care approach means you give people choice, flexibility and control over:

• the types of services they receive
• how you provide the services
• who provides the services
• when you provide the services.

You must:

• work with them to create their home care agreement, care plan and individualised budget
• let them decide how involved they want to be in managing their services
• have ongoing care discussions to make sure services are meeting their needs
• help them to access information and make informed decisions
• be transparent about how much funding they have and where it is going
• inform them of, and help them understand, any fees and charges they will pay under their home care agreement.

To help people understand the fees they will be asked to pay, we recommend you provide them with a copy of the Understanding fees for home care fact sheet.

Fee responsibilities

If you charge fees, you must:

• set your home care fees in a certain way
• manage home care fees in a transparent way.

Pricing responsibilities

You must be transparent about your prices for services.

Responsibilities to staff

Human resources is an aged care quality standard.

Your workforce must be skilled and qualified to provide safe, respectful and quality care and services.

Supporting staff so they can provide quality care is part of your duties as an approved provider. This includes:

• training and development
• access to vaccinations.

Reporting and record keeping requirements

You must:

• submit an Aged Care Financial Report each financial year
• keep proof of a person's eligibility for supplements
• tell us about changes to your services or organisation
• meet the record keeping requirements for approved providers.

Legislation

For full details, go to:

• Part 3 – Home care services in the User Rights Principles 2014
• 56–2 – Responsibilities of approved providers – home care in the Aged Care Act 1997.